Les dames blanches by Pierre Bordage (review)

abandonnés à notre sort de crève-la-faim sur des terres qui ne veulent et ne voudront jamais de nous” (253). It is ultimately a nightmare that started as a journey, a dream, and a promise of happiness. St. John’s University (NY) Zoe Petropoulou Bordage, Pierre. Les dames blanches. Nantes: L’Atalante, 2015. ISBN 978-2-84172718 -6. Pp. 380. 21 a. Sunrise in Nueil-les-Aubiers, sometime in the not-too-distant future. On that fateful morning, Léo looks out the kitchen window and spots a mysterious giant“egg” lying in the field just beyond the garden gate. The three-year-old alerts his mother, Élodie, still sipping her morning coffee and hardly interested in playing along with her son’s latest shenanigan. But looking out across the yard, there it is: a massive sphere. Léo darts out the front door. By the time an out-of-breath Élodie reaches the field, standing face-to-face with the enormous bubble, her son is gone. Is he inside? Try as she might, the sphere’s silvery surface resists all attempts to open it, an observation soon confirmed by others, including the army, whose most powerful explosives prove useless. Soon hundreds of similar bubbles appear in every corner of the planet. Thousands. Then millions. What are they? What do they want? Léo is but the first of countless children“captured”by the invaders. Then there are the magnetic waves that render cellphones, nuclear power, and high-speed trains useless, such that diesel locomotives and homing pigeons make a sudden comeback. The positive effects of this return to a simpler time notwithstanding, the conclusion is obvious: humanity is under attack. But just how far will we go to rid the planet of these damned “dames blanches”? What sacrifices are we willing to make? Luckily world leaders have managed to adopt and enforce the “loi d’Isaac”, creating an army of toddlers—“pédokazes”— the only ones able to penetrate the bubbles. The storyline follows Camille, an endearing journalist covering the invasion for the magazine Femme(s). She will eventually come to a tragic realization: “Les dames blanches n’avaient pas eu besoin d’user de la force: leur seule présence avait suffi à conduire l’espèce humaine à sa perte” (194). Bordage, one of France’s greatest science-fiction writers, is practically unknown in America. He is famous in Europe for his epic Star Wars-like trilogy, Guerriers du silence (L’Atalante, 1993–95). Equally well-written, Les dames blanches is a gripping thriller, impossible to set down for long. But it is more than poignant science-fiction: metaphorically, Bordage explores how humanity reacts to an incomprehensible, overwhelming threat. Readers may see in this an allusion to climate change, unbridled technology, or planetary conflict; in this respect, the novel is on par with earlier French sci-fi, such as Boulle’s La planète des singes (1963) and Barjavel’s La nuit des temps (1968). Provocative yet entertaining, the novel would make an impactful addition to a survey course in twenty-first-century French literature. Its short chapters also make it an ideal travel 256 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 257 companion.Will we ever crack the mystery of the mysterious bubbles? Basile, Camille’s ufologist companion, was perhaps not so far off the mark before his untimely death: “Si nous considérions la présence des dames blanches comme une chance, et non comme une épreuve, si nous les regardions comme des protectrices, et non des prédatrices” (119). Grand Valley State University (MI) Dan Golembeski Boyer, Elsa. Beast. Paris: P.O.L., 2015. ISBN 978-2-818-03673-0. Pp. 190. 13,25 a. The novel has built its generic reputation on a more or less distant relationship to the “real.” Beast elicits at least two questions about novelistic referentiality: not only how close it is to a real world, but also what kind of world it is depicting. Is this dystopia, fable, or something else? An opening scene in a small room plunged in darkness has readers scrambling to establish ground lines. Further details throw readers off: gray metal scales cover every surface of...