Dieu n’est même pas mort by Samuel Doux (review)

Reviews 269 begins Julia Deck’s novel, her first. It is a sensational beginning, that’s clear enough. So very clear, in fact, that one begins to suspect that the notion of sensationalism itself may be at issue. The expression fait divers recurs insistently in the text. Viviane hunts that species relentlessly in the newspapers she reads, unearthing a “victime de fait divers” (73) here, admiring a “héros de fait divers” (76) there, savoring a “souvenir de fait divers” (97) on yet another occasion. She finds the moments when real drama erupts in the middle of real life very compelling indeed, because they encourage her to believe that extreme situations coax meaning out of apparently meaningless things. By the time she confesses her fascination to a man whom she has just seduced—“Je m’intéresse aux faits divers” (100)—we readers are considerably less astonished than him. Thus prodded, however, we may recognize that we, too, can be intrigued by sensational events, granted the impressive narrative punch that they pack—and not only when we come upon them in newspapers.Viviane also reads her horoscope regularly, finding therein satisfactions of another sort. Maybe she seeks confirmation that every life has a narrative arc; perhaps she is trying to persuade herself that her own story is written in the stars. Speaking of the latter, Viviane is by far the brightest star in this constellation, though other, minor planets frequently circle into her orbit. We can observe her ex-husband, Julien Hermant, in long focus. We catch occasional glimpses of her therapist, Jacques Sergent, and of the “petite sorcellerie viennoise” (52) that he inflicted upon her. He is no longer of this world, but his wife, Gabrielle, and the young woman who is carrying his child, Angèle, remain, both of them in their own ways perfectly seraphic figures. Narrative voices alternate in a dizzying manner in this novel. It begins in the second person, addressing a vous that is clearly located in Viviane herself . Thereafter, it changes to a third-person narration, then to the first person plural and the first person singular. It subsequently shifts to a second person singular, a tu that points likewise directly toward Viviane, before switching back to the first person singular. And so forth. This is neither the most appealing feature of the novel, nor the most effective, because those changes in voice have very little to do with how the text actually works. It is often said that the real test of a novelist’s talent comes with the second book, and many readers of Viviane Élisabeth Fauville will be eager to see what Deck will offer us next. University of Colorado Warren Motte Doux, Samuel. Dieu n’est même pas mort. Paris: Julliard, 2012. ISBN 978-2-26002036 -3. Pp. 290. 19 a. Two epigraphs at the start of this novel suggest how humans do—or more often do not—live in time. Pascal asserts that we never think to live in the present; Christa Wolf warns us that we cannot sever ourselves from our past. In Doux’s opening paragraph, the main character further opines that memories and images compose “une vie étrange, plus que la mienne et la mienne aussi, des histoires, un passé qui n’en sont pas moins vrais” (11). Readers are thus forewarned to pay attention to the equal import of an unknown past and an unexamined present that comprise something larger than the character’s life. Elias Oberer, who speaks the lines quoted above, is the contemporary consciousness readers follow as he learns of his grandmother’s suicide and, more out of duty than affection, makes her funeral arrangements. This over-arching narrative has neo-classical tightness, but the solemn ritual of finality is experienced as mostly undramatic and empty quotidian. Elias is anxious to move from the present of this death—uncomfortably evocative of other deaths—into a future that is vague and directionless (he is a free-lance writer without much conviction and with no evident attachments). What makes his character intriguing is the emotional intelligence he possesses: Elias picks up on language, tone, and gesture, but mostly to avoid connections with...