Le règne du vivant par Alice Ferney (review)

n’est plus qu’une grande banlieue où on attend le train” (231). While it is tempting to place this novel in the tradition of Breton’s Nadja (1928) that would not do it full justice. If Photos volées has a certain affinity with surrealism, its lingering effect on the reader stems less from its literary heritage than from its portrait of a contemporary consciousness adrift in today’s world with an attitude of low-level,continuous befuddlement concerning the passage of time, the lack of intensity or achievement and the lingering sense that the train one is awaiting will never arrive. Florida State University William Cloonan Ferney, Alice. Le règne du vivant. Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-03595-2. Pp. 208. 19 a. This is a compelling story of man’s urgent need to care for our planet Earth and all its living creatures. This novel, which reads like an autobiographical account, is told through the eyes of Gérald Asmussen, a Norwegian journalist who serves as the cameraman aboard the Arrowhead on its seventh Antarctic campaign.With a handful of militants,theArrowhead is under the leadership of MagnusWallace,the incorruptible and indomitable environmental activist, founder of Gaia Association, who sails the seas to board whaling vessels poaching in protected areas. Wallace’s character is a tribute to Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace. From the start of the narrative, Asmussen’s admiration for Wallace is palpable: “Il avait déjà un nom pour beaucoup de gens et, chez ceux qui intriguaient dans la défense de l’environnement—je ne mis pas longtemps à m’en apercevoir—c’était le nom d’un empêcheur de tourner en rond” (15). Readers must take note as Le règne du vivant is not a story of eco-tearful lament but one that depicts the true reality of our oceans, which are becoming the world’s landfills and regrettably can no longer protect its animals.As the narrative progresses, we as readers become so engrossed that it is as if we are with Wallace and Asmussen, chasing the whalers and living the dangerous adventures of those in close pursuit of ruthless poachers, feeling every heartsick pain along the way, such as that of the disturbing scene of a shark’s death: “Le sang tresse des rubans, colore des volutes que la bête traverse au long de sa chute. Puis l’animal estropié, plus vivant que jamais dans sa mort à venir, l’œil ouvert sur la transparence de l’eau et le sable blanc” (83). So vividly accurate is the documentation of harsh events, such as this shark’s death scene or that of whales being dismembered alive on the deck of factory ships, that the danger for readers is that we could easily forget that we are reading a novel.Yet understanding Wallace’s motives of trying to educate the world about the illegal organized plundering of marine wildlife and how these beautiful creatures are dying by the thousands is essential. These poachers are criminals who are not just violating international regulations but are laughing at them.We cannot help but be drawn in by Asmussen’s poignant reflections: “Observer les baleines estompe et adoucit le monde matériel: jamais la 196 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 197 bande de jeunes défenseurs des animaux n’a deviné la violence de ceux à qui elle s’attaquait. [...] un bateau couvert d’impacts de balles, nous le rappelle”(202). Ferney thus succeeds in demonstrating that the absolute greed of some people is mortgaging the future of our planet. Every carefully-chosen word of her elegant and poetic prose touches the reader so deeply that her impassioned plea for the rule of man not to be the end of the reign of life cannot be ignored. Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini Foenkinos,David.Charlotte.Paris: Gallimard,2014.ISBN 978-2-07-014568-3.Pp.222. 18,50 a. Although subtitled as a novel, the book is a rather well-researched biography of the German-Jewish artist/painter Charlotte Salomon, born in Berlin in 1917 and murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. The author follows in chronological order...