Je suis vivant par by Kettly Mars (review)

present throughout the book, providing an intimate portrait of the author that is often funny, quite plausible, and sometimes cruel. It is via the dashed illusions of an underappreciated author, who hopes that an understanding public would arise from a cycling adventure, that Léal explores the feeling of emptiness that accompanies any act of creation. He presents a writer with all his flaws and fears. It is literary introspection and self-critical observation in a uniquely creative format. Fulbright Specialist (NY) Eileen M. Angelini Mars, Kettly. Je suis vivant. Paris: Mercure de France, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7152-39302 . Pp. 177. 16 a. Returning to the post-quake timeline used in Aux frontières de la soif (2013), Mars creates another narrative decidedly linked to the 2010 Haitian seism. Once again, the aftermath setting is purposeful, allowing Mars to explore and expose myriad psychological reverberations of the catastrophe in both content and style. As one of Haiti’s most prominent authors and a survivor of the disaster, Mars’s choice to describe the edges of the tragedy rather than crafting a novel based solely on the horrific physical event is deceptively powerful. More specifically, by targeting in Je suis vivant fringe circumstances such as sibling rivalry and family hierarchy, Mars ensures that the reader is pulled into a personalized version of the earthquake perhaps on an even more impactful, relatable level. Éliane, the eighty-six-year-old widowed matriarch of the Bernier family, carries“sur ses épaules le poids de la vieillesse”(43), following the loss of her husband, Francis, along with emotional burdens from her past. Stalwart and resourceful, she is pivotal to the narrative’s forward progress, especially when faced in the early pages of the novel with the return of Alexandre, one of her four adult children, following forty years of internment for schizophrenia. The psychiatric institution in which he has been kept is forced to close due to the outbreak of cholera and the worsening physical condition of the building as a result of the quake. And it was indeed Éliane who, compelled by a desire to “sauver le reste de la famille” (140), authorized her then violent son’s confinement following an incident in which Alexandre stabbed his mother with a kitchen knife. The other siblings of the clan— Marylène,Grégoire,and Gabrielle—each appear in the text as richly-drawn,contrastive personalities and must learn to interact with a brother they only obliquely remember from their adolescence. Grégoire assumes the leadership role, arranging care for Alexandre whose refusal or inability to speak tries the patience of his caregivers. Gabrielle, recalling her tender yet somewhat questionable closeness to Alexandre as a child, confronts her mother with queries regarding the reality of that relationship. And Marylène, an internationally known artist now back in the family compound, reinvents herself by forming an intimate relationship with her female model. All the 278 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 279 major and minor characters in the text, including Alexandre, come to life by serving as one of the ever-changing narrators for the novel’s short, vignette-like chapters. In fact it is Alexandre’s internal dialog in the opening chapters that describes the earthquake’s strike, revealing as well the extent of his mental illness. Quite effectively, the labyrinthian narrative structure chosen by Mars develops in such a way as to mirror the dizzying aftereffects of the quake, one from which its characters and the reader cannot escape. It also persuasively mimics the schizophrenic disturbances we witness in Alexandre, deftly replicating on a much broader and contemporary level the emotional tremors Haiti and its citizens continue to absorb. University of Colorado, Denver Linda Alcott Milne, Anna-Louise. 75. Paris: Gallimard, 2016. ISBN 978-2-07-011681-2. Pp. 204. 18 a. C’est une petite rue du nord-est de Paris dont on ne saura pas le nom et dont aucun guide touristique ne recommande la visite. La pauvreté a fini par s’y installer comme chez elle. Les bâtiments se délabrent, les friches et les squats progressent et accueillent bientôt des populations mouvantes vivant“au gré des stratégies polici...