Temps glaciaires by Fred Vargas (review)

accurate and relevant. Jules, Zibal, and Alice form a trio of need, love, compassion, healing, and joy. Jules is touching, moving, and poignant: highly recommended. Santa Rosa Alliance Française (CA) Davida Brautman Vargas, Fred. Temps glaciaires. Paris: Flammarion, 2015. ISBN 978-2- 0813-6044-0. Pp. 497. 20 a. In the author’s ninth Adamsberg novel, the Commissioner returns, after a hiatus of four years, to investigate a suspicious double suicide in which a mysterious symbol near the bodies catches the detective’s interest. Also back to work on this case is Adamsberg’s unconventional but loveable squadron at the Paris criminal brigade, including Adrien Danglard with his penchant for historical and architectural trivia, Violette Retancourt with her keen instinct and uncanny strength, and Louis Veyrenc, who speaks in rhyming couplets. Adamsberg, the “pelleteur de nuages” (289), is, as ever, more articulate with a sketchbook than with words. His understanding of the human mind allows him to outsmart the most confounding criminals. In Temps glaciaires, subtle incongruities in the deceptively straightforward crimes lead the Commissioner to two increasingly puzzling and disparate mysteries. Adamsberg travels to frigid Iceland to explore the circumstances surrounding some violent deaths ten years earlier.When coming to Le Creux in Normandy,he uncovers a secret organization of historical reenactors whose specialty is recreating Robespierre’s chilling meetings with the National Assembly during the French Revolution. Thus the historical past of the Reign of Terror, with its influence on the collective unconscious of contemporary France, forms an intricate knot of embroiled threads, a “pelote d’algues” (247, 471) with decade-old violence in distant Iceland. But the true objective of the novel is not to explore crime, but human nature. Temps glaciaires explores the complexities of identity, which is formed by biological heredity and family lineage, but also by one’s cultural, geographical, and ideological environment. The novel conveys an appreciation for cultural variation while ultimately showing that all humans are similar in their basic needs and urges. It is the poetic indirection of Vargas’s style that brings about this fruitful overlapping of psychological, anthropological, and linguistic themes. Creative metaphors fuse these abstractions into a riveting plot. Adamsberg’s neighbor, who as a child had been bitten on the arm by a spider shortly before losing that limb, still feels decades later the frustration of not having been able to scratch the itch to satisfaction. He encourages Adamsberg to explore troubling elements, however insignificant they may seem, to their full clarification. The goose-grass that continuously sticks to Adamsberg’s pants symbolizes the Commissioner’s frustrations. The human tendency to succumb to group influence and the lure of fanaticism are studied through theory and example under the name“l’effet Robespierre”.Although the atmosphere of Vargas’s most recent novel is less sinister than that of her earlier detective fictions, this 282 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 283 novel’s dialogues remain sharp and its descriptions evocative. The characters are varied, at times surrealist, and always charming. After finishing the novel, the reader has the impression of returning from a voyage in time and space, feeling intellectually renewed and surprisingly more optimistic about humanity. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius Vuillard, Éric. Tristesse de la terre: une histoire de Buffalo Bill Cody.Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-03599-0. Pp.158. 18 a. Ce texte est à la fois un récit déchirant sur les Indiens des Grandes Plaines “au moment où leur histoire s’achève”(144) et une réflexion sur le vrai et le faux, le factice et“la réalité partout et nulle part”(30). Les portraits d’époque apportent au texte une résonnance émotionnelle, car si les marques d’authenticité historique sont bien là (dates, lieux, personnages), en même temps tout est faux dans cette“mise en scène de l’Histoire” (12). Le grand metteur en scène dont Vuillard raconte une histoire, c’est Buffalo Bill Cody dont le spectacle intitulé Wild West Show va récrire à sa façon la disparition des Indiens des Grandes Plaines. C’est une amère constatation de contempler la tragédie d’un peuple transform...