Sur le sable by Michèle Lesbre (review)

émaillé de mots bretons, la narratrice se rapproche enfin du Menuisier, “mon père” (279). Eastern Connecticut State University Michèle Bacholle-Boškovic LESBRE, MICHÈLE. Sur le sable. Paris: Sabine Wespieser, 2009. ISBN 978-2-84805-071-3. Pp. 149. 17 a. A woman is telling a story. She meets a man on a beach, at night, by chance. Both are of indeterminate age, but not young, and they are, figuratively speaking, lost. Their lives have intersected here, on the dune, as a fire set by the man rages behind them. Each is at a crossroads between past and future, and Michèle Lesbre fills this moment of stasis with storytelling. Our narrator, the woman, obsessed with the novels of Patrick Modiano, sees herself as a fictional character. She gives nicknames taken from her favorite author’s works to lovers and passers-by. She roams Paris, seeking out the novels’ settings, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. And it is she who is our guide into this dream-like scene, where the reality of the beach, the sea and the fire stands in contrast to the two ethereal characters whom we know only through the chapters of their lives that they share, he with her, she with us. The title, Sur le sable, refers to the setting of the encounter but more importantly to the traces of each character’s past that are evoked here. Walking with the man, the woman sees their footprints in the sand and recalls a quote from a Modiano novel “Les chevaux ne passent qu’une fois sur Memory Lane mais il reste la trace de leurs sabots” (46). Much later, she characterizes herself and the man as “deux vieux chevaux dont les pas de la nuit s’effaçaient peu à peu sur le sable” (109). Like a hall of mirrors, there are stories within stories. The man sits, waits, watches as the flames consume part of his past. The woman arrives, joins him, and listens to the journey that has brought him to this place, to this act. It is perhaps her unsatisfying existence as a night clerk in a shoddy Parisian hotel, the reality that she flees through voracious reading and unsavory relationships, which makes her an excellent listener. His stories are not so different from the novels through which her vision of the world is filtered. As readers, we live vicariously through the woman’s experience, listening to her first-person narration. Then, without warning, we find ourselves hearing the third-person narrative of the man’s tale. And then back to the woman’s perspective as his anecdotes encourage her reminiscences. Tragedies that marked the man prompt the narrator to explore difficult moments of her life and his losses recall her own disappointments. In this convoluted but intriguing stream of consciousness , words and references nudge the narrative forward along a path that feels predestined. When the two stories converge we are surprised, but only a little . The woman’s narration draws us near: we want to know more. She questions fate, memory, missed opportunity, and the seeming impossibility of relationships. The man keeps us at a distance. We know of his experiences but we remain outsiders . The two characters are sketched roughly and do not, in and of themselves, attract much attention. It is the interaction between them that sparks the greatest interest. And more exciting still is the fact that the bond that develops between the readers of this novel and its characters replicates in many ways the relationship between the man and woman. Just as he invites her to sit and listen, the novel invites the attentive reader into this fictional world. People have come and 618 FRENCH REVIEW 84.3 gone in the lives of these two characters, leaving impressions. The two characters have done the same for each other. And the novel has done the same for us. In Sur le sable, Lesbre transforms a chance meeting on a deserted beach into an invitation to recognize the traces, however ephemeral, that people and literature leave in our lives. Metropolitan State College of Denver (CO) Ann Williams NOTHOMB, AMÉLIE. Le Voyage d’hiver. Paris...