Le dos crawlé by Éric Fottorino (review)

sourire du désastre” (261). They are, without question, a necessary melancholy for the creation of literature. To memorialize human experience through narration and art transcends the individual, achieving a form of permanence and immortality. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius FOTTORINO, ÉRIC. Le dos crawlé. Paris: Gallimard, 2011. ISBN 978-2-07-013418-2. Pp. 206. 16,90 a. Thirteen-year-old Marin is visiting his uncle on the Atlantic coast of France. For him and for his ten-year-old friend Lisa, the summer of 1976 is filled with love, disappointment, budding sexuality and life lessons learned. There is death and laughter, boredom and ecstasy. As in any coming-of-age novel, Marin and Lisa will be challenged by their experiences and will change as they confront the world around them. Adults are clearly secondary characters in the novel, although they play a role in the education of the boy and girl. Uncle Abel and other old men from the town help Marin to build strength of character by simply living as they do, reveling in joys and facing sadness and death with an honesty that the boy cannot help but see and admire, even when he does not fully understand. On the other end of the spectrum is Lisa’s cold and distant mother, a vain former small-town beauty queen who is incapable of love. The two young people witness the mother’s infidelity and her self-absorption and when the woman seduces Marin he struggles to understand his desire and her lust. He senses that something is dreadfully wrong with their liaison and knows, even as he is overwhelmed by teenage sexual obsession, that what is right is to nourish the equally bewildering love he has felt all summer for Lisa. She knows that there is something fundamental missing in her relationship with both of her parents, but comes to see that her friendship with Marin will make up for much that she does not have. In a metaphoric move common to Fottorino’s style, she jumps in the water, not knowing how to swim, and counts on Marin to save her, “Je savais bien que tu me repêcherais.” (75). Which, of course, he does. This is the basic story and these are a few of the themes, but it is how these are brought to life that makes Le dos crawlé noteworthy. First and foremost is Fottorino’s uncanny ability to write in the first person from the point of view of a rather unremarkable young man. He rises to the challenges inherent in such an endeavor, in particular by writing in real time. He skillfully avoids the awkwardness that can occur when an author tries too hard to present a character’s backstory in the first person. We learn early on to follow Marin’s wandering thoughts and observations and it is to Fottorino’s credit that these musings feel natural. We experience the situations along with Marin, seeing them through his eyes and struggling, as he does, to decipher their meanings with the limited experience and the vocabulary at his disposal. Fottorino is successful at writing with an adolescent ’s voice, and we get a window on Marin’s view of the world through the language he uses. Amusing comparisons surprise and please, such as when he describes his uncle’s love for anagrams: “Le soir des fois ça lui prend des heures à remuer les lettres dans tous les sens comme mon père l’hiver avec la braise froide dans la cheminée” (164–65). Childlike mispronunciations (“l’Adjérie”, “l’arbre génialogique”) are sprinkled throughout the narration and run-on sentences and curious turns of phrase also show how Marin is trying desperately to make sense Reviews 603 of everything around him. Far from appearing silly, Marin’s use of language underlines the Janus-like nature of adolescents, turned simultaneously toward the past and the future. Like the swimmer of the backstroke, they can’t see where they are going but they take the risk and move ahead. Marin will teach Lisa first to swim and then to do the backstroke. And the beauty of the backstroke...