Il bouge encore par by Jennifer Murzeau (review)

Reviews 277 ing,the resulting fiction’s over-the-top images,overextended lists and repetitious imagery echo the narrator’s obsessions and create an increasing sense of confinement and panic in the reader as well. As Matthieussent’s title indicates, Luxuosa, a structural V, is both the boat and the book, each proposing to take the reader/client on a voyage. But whereas the ocean liner seeks to entertain by eradicating introspection, Matthieussent’s novel strives to encourage an awareness of the nature and implications of the entertainment sold throughout contemporary Western societies. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius Murzeau, Jennifer. Il bouge encore. Paris: Laffont, 2014. ISBN 978-2-221-14573-9. Pp. 256. 18,50 a. Antoine and Mélanie are not an ideal couple.Conformism,not love or even friendship , led them to buy an apartment together, and now Mélanie wants a baby: “[J]’ai trente-deux ans, toutes mes copines ont des enfants. Toutes!”(92). Unfortunately, not only is Antoine reluctant to become a father, but he has just been fired from his job as a sales executive at a shady pest-control company, losing not merely a source of income but a position central to his sense of self. Without his job, he no longer feels he has a purpose in life. Mélanie’s existence is similarly dominated by her demanding boss at a management consulting firm. The couple’s lives have been structured around their iPhones, BlackBerrys, and computers with their attendant text messages, emails, and games, as well as Facebook and LinkedIn notifications. Now Antoine is torn from this virtual world and “ramené au réel sous les jets glacés de ses élans de lucidité” (25). Unloved as children, immature in adulthood, both have fragile egos and little patience with each other. Mélanie does not love Antoine; she is just angry because if they break up she will have only one choice: “[R]ecommencer depuis le début [...] Attraper un homme, l’apprivoiser, le convaincre de se reproduire avec elle”(47).Antoine’s friends, similarly, who are all zealous members of the“société de consommation”(116), cannot understand why he does not throw himself into a job search, while he realizes only slowly that he has no“envie de bosser, de me casser le cul”(114) or, more elegantly, that he does not want to rejoin“le système [...] qui lui a dicté ce qu’il convenait de désirer” (135).As these quotations indicate, the language moves between educated French and vulgar expressions, as when Mélanie thinks, “elle mérite mieux, elle en a soupé c’est bon, alors elle voulait un couple stable, sérieux” but instead “elle le trouve le cul calé dans son canapé, les couilles bien vides probablement” (47). What emerges from Antoine’s transformation into a long-term chômeur is an indictment of electronics that permeate nearly all aspects of life, a society pushing people to buy things they can barely afford, and exploitative human relationships in a culture dominated by big business. Only when he stops wasting his newly free time with drink, sleep, and despondency and watches documentaries on ecology does Antoine begin to distance himself from the world of consumerism. At the end “il bouge encore” (256), having decided to train for a new and more authentic way of life. Even though this roman à thèse can be heavy-handed in showing Antoine’s “métamorphose en homme lucide” (232), the novel does manage to draw in the reader. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Nothomb, Amélie. Pétronille. Paris: Albin Michel, 2014. ISBN 978-2-226-25831-1. Pp. 169. 16,50 a. Le vingt-troisième roman de Nothomb, s’il rejoint des préoccupations de certains de ses ouvrages précédents, a le mérite d’innover dans un genre peu commun. Pétronille est essentiellement une sorte d’éloge déjanté de l’amitié littéraire. Pourtant, il s’agit d’une amitié marinée dans une des boissons préférées de l’écrivaine— le champagne—lequel, du fait de sa récurrence au fil des romans...