Celle que vous croyez par by Camille Laurens (review)

admirateur. Or, le sens de “La vie est d’hommage” est tout autre. Kerouac exprime à plusieurs reprises son dégoût et sa déception de la vie: il n’a jamais aimé la sienne (53) et c’est la tristesse qui le tue (58). La vie est donc dommage. Kerouac écrit le mot tel qu’il l’imagine. Kerouac reconnaît qu’il est et a toujours été franco-américain dans l’âme. Les Franco-Américains ont le droit d’être fiers de compter parmi les éminents auteurs américains un des leurs. Fairfield & Sacred Heart Universities (CT) Vincent H. Morrissette Laurens, Camille. Celle que vous croyez. Paris: Gallimard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-07014387 -0. Pp. 186. 17,50 a. This tale, developed from a common Facebook fantasy, reinforces the roles of fictions in the lives of those faced with boredom. Claire is a forty-seven-year-old mother when she decides to reinvent herself on Facebook in order to be attractive to men. She is separated from her husband and is maître de conférences with a specialty in comparative literature. Her posting is initially explained as a search for more information about her on-again, off-again lover Jo through her online presence with his best friend Chris. Claire gives herself another last name, decides to be twenty-four, and substitutes her niece Katia’s picture as her alter ego. All of this lying leads to more lies as the basis for an “amitié virtuelle” (39) developed from an exchange of emails, phone calls by her to Chris, and text messages. The narrative is composed of four documents: 1) Claire’s memoir addressed to her psychoanalyst Marc; 2) Marc’s presentation of Claire’s case to his colleagues; 3) Claire-Camille’s letter to her book editor objecting to supposed litigation for this fictional setup; and 4) the testimony of Claire’s husband to his divorce lawyer. Claire is a character created by Camille who enters the story as the author originating the fictions as therapy for madness in a psychiatric clinic. Initially, Claire justifies her initiative of her relationship with Chris because she believes that “c’est un malheur d’être une femme” (46) and leaves desire, and its realization, merely to the instigation of men. Claire-Camille is in a writing workshop in a psychiatric clinic where she composes a novel whose title, Les fausses confidences, recalls the play by Marivaux displaced in her high-tech setting. Meanwhile, the separately reported suicides of Katia and Chris exemplify the serious stakes in human lives attributed to the false stories being told in the name of love. Claire also cites such literary models as Proust, Duras, Tasso, and Laclos to explain herself with her testimony and the literary sequel she writes. The published author Camille enters the game when the narrator plays with “Camille” and “chameleon” as words that continue the changeability of identity in the worlds of fiction-writing and Facebook. The author also cites Virginia Woolf who insists that nothing ever happens until it is written. But many of the details in this re-re-counted narrative change, so the 276 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 277 story shifts as yet another narrator enters the fictional arena. There is much written here about the similar desires underpinning love and writing. The Laclos references especially provide insights into the manipulation and victimization entailed by love and writing in the examples of his female characters Tourvel and Merteuil. Meanwhile, multiple fictions created by Laurens constitute a vertiginous mise en abyme of two mirrors facing each other, thus pluralizing fiction and reality. This leads readers out of the boredom supposed initially and into various fictions, their literary references, and their inter-connected realities. The fiction writer thus creates the space for the perpetuation of life in alternate realities. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne Léal, Fred. Le mont perclus de ma solitude. Paris: P.O.L, 2015. ISBN 978-2-8180-37669 . Pp. 208. 18 a. Léal combines his talents as a novelist and poet to offer the story of an unknown author who struggles with a lack of public recognition for his...