La nonne et le brigand by Frédérique Deghelt (review)

life story. His narrative is sprinkled with “comme je le dis au fiston.” Kala, on the other hand, begins a vexed relationship with his father and race as he observes the father’s reaction to the assassination of Martin Luther King. He cannot understand why this black man and this death have so deeply affected his father. He learns through his mother of his father’s affectionate relationship with black troops at the end of the Second World War, his love affair with the jazz they listened to and horror for the segregated society of their native land. This has led him to an eloquent belief in the solidarity of the human community. The father is accidentally killed in the demonstration protesting the King assassination, struck by a black police officer. Kala arrives at the hospital just in time to see the body wheeled out by two Antillean men. The raw material for the life-long nightmares he will suffer is given. The boy follows the extraordinary outpouring of rage and sorrow that accompanied Martin Luther King to his burial, comparing this international manifestation of grief with the small family group that participated in the final rites for his father. From this bizarre cross-over of cause and effect, Kala conceives not a sense of solidarity with blacks but an all-consuming hatred that drives him to spend his mature years working in non-governmental organizations in Africa, involved not with human problems but with the preservation of wild animals. Circumstances bring Mamad to work as a boy for the solitary and haunted Kala. But the white man gradually comes to hate the black servant, seeing in him an incarnation of the black who pursues him in his dream. He finds an excuse to beat him savagely , using the skill his father, an admirer of Muhammad Ali, taught him. These scenes have a surreal quality to them. We watch Kala from Mamad’s perspective, tied to a chair, groggy from the blows, without food or drink for three days, bathed in his own filth. Kala carefully fixes his own food, sets up his hi-fi to play his father’s favorite Miles Davis numbers, facing the mangled form of Mamad. The last interlude is told again in the third person, but from Laurent’s point of view. He was reprimanded for the near-killing of his houseboy and forced to stay in Paris for a year; thus he returns joyfully to Africa. We return to the theme of the father. Laurent has decided to adopt a child outside the formal legal framework and take him back to France. He has taken advantage of the extreme poverty of the boy’s family in order to appropriate him. Mamad sits by silently as Laurent drives him and the child from the airport. Aquinas College (MI) Suzanne Gasster Carrierre DEGHELT, FRÉDÉRIQUE. La nonne et le brigand. Arles: Actes sud, 2011. ISBN 978-2-74279471 -3. Pp. 409. 22,80 a. Venez, lecteurs dont l’œil étincelle, approchez, Frédérique Deghelt vous convie à entendre une histoire, deux en fait, deux histoires d’amour, histoires de nonnes et de brigands, légendes modernes d’une écrivaine bien en peine de se définir—“Journaliste? Réalisatrice? Mère? Amante? Femme du monde? Maîtresse du vent? Aventurière? Écrivain peut-être?” (www.frederiquedeghelt.com)—mais dont La nonne et le brigand n’a rien à envier à la “Légende de la nonne” écrite par Victor Hugo et chantée par Georges Brassens et Barbara. La démographe voyageuse, Lysange Kelly, mère de deux grands enfants, amante aux belles histoires mais qui ne croit plus au grand amour, s’était donné quarante-cinq ans 982 FRENCH REVIEW 85.5 “pour accéder à un bonheur éclatant” (15). Deux mois avant cette échéance, elle rencontre le grand amour dans un aéroport londonien en attente d’un vol qui les mènera à Bombay et vers leur histoire. Avec Pierre, grand reporter, elle connaîtra l’amour sorcier, l’amour chimérique, l’amour fou qui donne au roman ses pages les plus vibrantes et les plus lyriques. Sans cette rencontre, Lysange aurait-elle r...