Les rayons du soleil par Nicolas Bouyssi (review)

son-in-law’s lunacy shows in the only idea he ever had,which was to develop a program for generating the illusion of absence when people are at home. Other“witnesses”also have much to say about themselves but little for Aurélien, immediate family members being no exception, with his oldest son saying sarcastically:“Aurélien Moreau. Je ne l’ai jamais rencontré”(32).A former psychiatrist sees not a lunatic but a“normopathe”in Aurélien, too normal to be normal perhaps, but “[c]orrecte” (35) like a robot. Thereafter , only Aurélien’s words appear in ever-evolving journals from the six months prior to and the nine months following his crime. At first, his entries are like lists, each headed by month, date, and saint’s name, followed by familiar people (or occasional product) of the same name. Next, under “Correspondance années passées,” Aurélien transfers entries of the same date from previous years, the only apparent “correspondance ” being the shared date, indicating his need to impose order outweighs his desire to make sense. Conversely, he remains blind to things that clearly make sense but invite disorder (i.e., evoke emotion), illustrated in an entry about finding a condom wrapper under the bed in 2008 and being“perplexe”, since the last time he and his wife had sex was in 1989 (47). Several rubrics follow: “Météo,” “Travail,” “Autres actions effectuées,” “Dicton,” and “Prévisions pour demain,” followed by details one might expect (i.e., “colder” for the weather; “Silence is golden” for the proverb). But many are enigmatic, humorous, even poetic, such as “Trouver parapluie interne” under “Prévisions pour demain”(51).Aurélien’s journal does not show“un esprit pauvre, très pauvre,” as the psychiatrist concluded due to its absence of “phrases longues” (34). In fact,Aurélien’s notations“escape”into well-formed prose the day he receives an anonymous letter. His effort to gain control through writing over this unanticipated event leads to disclosure of a past that his list-like entries held in check. Soon a man who clung to the “emploi du temps” of a job he disdained out of an obsession for order is demanding his“droit au temps”(139) to discover the living he has avoided, eventually carrying out a work incident that lands him in the hospital before he can be arrested. Emerging from his coma, Aurélien announces, “Je poème, Maman” (195), as poetry propels him into a second life neither he nor readers can anticipate in this exquisitely beautiful, utterly original work representing the best of French literature today. Union College (NY) Michelle Chilcoat Bouyssi, Nicolas. Les rayons du soleil. Paris: P.O.L, 2013. ISBN 978-2-8180-1930-0. Pp. 176. 15 a. Bouyssi specializes in making you feel uncomfortable. Les algues (2010) tells of a man’s vacation to a small Breton village with two life-size blow-up dolls, one his companion, the other his son. In the futuristic dystopia of S’autodétruire et les enfants (2011), a child recounts his father’s alcoholism and delusions in excruciating detail. The same is true for the short story collection, Les rayons du soleil. Describing the 254 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 Reviews 255 published works of Octave Wiggh, the narrator notes they skewer “la classe moyenne athée et cultivée, la classe pessimiste, sentimentale et nostalgique, la classe semibourgeoise tout à la fois passive mais révoltée”(32). The tales are haunted by specters, whether they be our possessions, which eventually overcome our existence—“Les maisons se ressemblent toutes. Elles sont, à plus ou moins long terme, comblées d’armoires énormes et de bibelots, et ma vie est en train de se transformer en une armoire énorme comblé de bibelots” (82); outsiders, “Je ne suis pas un sac” (25), repeats a man whose neighbors ignore him; or literal ghosts. In “Septième fantôme,” a man flees his home, which he believes is haunted, yet cannot escape the feeling there, either. The outside world is also filled with oddities. “Au café” describes a man who spends an entire day with “Je rêve...