Il était une ville par Thomas B Reverby (review)

tendresse, d’humour et de sincérité, Redouane fait une radioscopie des trois grands maux qui sévissent au Maghreb: le régionalisme, la corruption et la bureaucratie. University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point Alek Baylee Toumi Reverby, Thomas B. Il était une ville. Paris: Flammarion, 2015. ISBN 978-2-08134821 -9. Pp. 270. 19 a. Set against the background of a dying American metropolis laboring a slow but assured mortality, the reader is offered a touching story of desperate survival. Once a flourishing industrial city and a starship of the United States of America’s capitalistic economy thanks to its automotive industry, Detroit, in 2008, suddenly succumbed to a dire economic crisis: jobs were lost, banks faltered, houses were deserted, people fled to the suburbs, and the inner city became an abandoned acropolis. It is within this disastrous social and industrial condition that Eugène is brought in to initiate a new automotive industrial line. Upon his arrival the atmosphere is apocalyptic; the city is drowning in its systematic pessimism. The inner city decor consists of rundown and burnt houses, decrepit housing, emptied schools, deserted offices, violence à la Mad Max (title of one of the many chapters), and downcast bars not unlike those depicted by the American painter Edward Hopper in his “Nighthawks” series. With poetic ability, however, Reverby offers an acute sensibility in his depiction of the characters and describes to the reader what love might be in the middle of a catastrophe. The storyline is twofold. One generally revolves around the disappearance of twelve-yearold Charlie, which brings together: detective Brown, who is obsessed by the sudden eclipse of children from the inner city; Georgia, the warm-hearted grandmother who is deeply troubled about her grandchild Charlie; Candice, the Dive In bar’s tired but still lovely and well-grounded waitress“au rire brillant et rouge”(38, 116); and Eugène, whose character and presence is strongly maintained throughout the novel. The other storyline disputes the automotive industry’s managerial style, and brings up the threat from worldwide competition in the modern world’s automotive industry when the competitive fact is that whenever “votre voisin a des salaires quatre ou six ou vingt fois inférieurs aux vôtres, même ce que vous savez faire de mieux vous avez intérêt à le produire chez lui” (236). This industrial situation permeates the novel and forces Eugène to come to grips with an unpropitious professional situation and perhaps even managerial betrayal. Interestingly, the forty-one short chapters drive the literary engine rather than simply relate a number of vignettes which might not coalesce. Practically each chapter, moreover, focuses on either an event or an individual and helps the reader become more intimate with the main characters and circumstances involved, e.g., DeLorean était un génie refers to Eugène’s industrial idealism, Huckleberry Finn depicts Charlie’s self-induced adventurous departure, Lone Star introduces inspector 226 FRENCH REVIEW 90.2 Reviews 227 Brown, and others with even clearer and often American literary references. These short chapters (three to seven pages) facilitate the reading and intensify the story’s progress to an interesting postlude. Metropolitan State University of Denver, emeritus Alain Ranwez Rutés, Sébastien, et Juan Hernández Luna. Monarques. Paris: Albin Michel, 2015. ISBN 978-2-226-31810-7. Pp. 376. 21,50 a. This novel is a complex yet highly rewarding work. It is divided into three parts. The first is an epistolary novel set in the 1930s.We read the exchange of letters between a Mexican graphic artist named Augusto and a young French communist named Jules. The two have never met and their correspondence comes about by chance. It is inspired by Augusto’s love and pursuit of a German femme fatale who calls herself Loreleï. The latter, like her mythical namesake, is a siren who lures men to their destruction. She is actually a spy and secret agent of the Third Reich, but she turns out in the end to have a heart of gold. One of her missions is to infiltrate the production of the Disney animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It is the wish of...