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Reviews 281 Parisis, Jean-Marc. La recherche de la couleur. Paris: Stock, 2012. ISBN 978-2-23406415 -7. Pp. 186. 18 a. Novels about novelists can be problematic, but here the consciously literary firstperson narration of the main character, François Novel, allows us to see the inner workings of this writer of what others call histoires d’amour as well as his critical perception of French society today. What keeps us following the plot, which otherwise might be banal, is the biting style. Parisis doesn’t treat his characters with much kindness, nor does he spare us scenes of ugliness, but these are part of the richness of La recherche. This story essentially recounts the sufferings of a not-so-young man who is feeling at odds with the world. In the opening paragraph, during a party, he asks himself “Qu’est-ce que mon corps—autrement dit ce qu’il me restait de ma vie—faisait là?” (9). François is bored with friends and colleagues, displeased by the fact that Marianne, the wife he has loved and desired for years, has grown older and looks her age, and he is vaguely bothered by negative reactions to his work. He has managed to avoid facing the malaise of living through sexual pleasure (“Je pensais à Marianne, à ce qu’elle m’avait permis d’oublier pendant toutes ces années: ce monde qui commençait à me peser” [44]) and writing (“On écrivait pour s’oublier, dans la joie de s’oublier” [79]). He is now seeking something, in the manner of the German Romantics who are the topic of his current research, in particular Novalis, whom he cites frequently. François spends much time looking for a poetry of life that seems sadly lacking in life,here in twenty-first century France.Perhaps because of this disconnect,La recherche is a book of contrasts. Short scenes, almost cinematic in nature, show Parisis’s gift for developing oppositions as seen in the juxtaposition of his encounters with a hideously manipulative aging singer (la mort?) and his chance meetings of young women full of honesty, energy, and life. Parisis also moves from the concrete to the abstract quite well. Events in the present, including Marianne’s sudden death, spark reminiscences about the past and give readers access to background and personal philosophy in an unobtrusive way. The young François, seriously marked by his mother’s death, found refuge in black-and-white movies until the day when he, adolescent, discovered that death could be held at bay by writing. Writing was the way out of the colorless world and a means to effectuate “la recherche de la couleur” (109). It is perhaps his overdeveloped belief in the power of writing and writers, however, that allows François, adult, to avoid living. His countless references to authors by name, through quotations , and through paraphrases at key moments keep emotions at a distance and it is not until the end of the novel that our character, not much older than he was at the beginning, is ready to live. Is it odd to imagine a bildungsroman about an adult? Yes, but this novel comes quite close. Metropolitan State University of Denver (CO) Ann Williams ...

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