Consolation by Mireille Calle-Gruber

Abstract

Yasmina’s acquaintances to present a broader picture: one has lost her home in southern Lebanon to Israeli bombardments; some leave the country to avoid the war; yet another, a Christian, discovers that she is pregnant by the Shiite whom she has secretly married. Yet despite the explosions and smoke, despite the bomb damage, land-mine wounds, and burning buildings, the war seems distant, more news event than personal experience. It is hard to believe that Yasmina really feels that she is living in a nightmare when her life is filled with so much luxury. Her cosmopolitan friends are the sort who, she writes, once made Beirut into the Paris of the Middle East but are being marginalized by growing fundamentalism. She sees the “jeunesse chrétienne” emigrating because of “un environnement hostile” and reflects that “les chrétiens arabes sont à l’origine du tissu social” because they “sont ouverts à d’autres cultures que la leur” (205)—a view which seems to ignore the role of the Christian Phalangists in the Shatila and Sabra massacres of 1982. Yet the politics that interest her are not governmental but interpersonal : “l’amour reste l’alpha et l’oméga de l’existence” (221). Her family, her female friends, and her lover count, as does her work on gender relations, which is ironic considering how she subordinates herself to Marc (though the novel suggests that a change is coming). Important as the book’s concerns are, it is not entirely successful as a novel. Many characters appear only long enough to make a rather stilted speech or two, without much psychological development; the only one with depth is Yasmina herself. The technique, though, is interesting, for the book is composed of three elements: the E-mails to and from friends and acquaintances, Yasmina’s narrations set in roman type, and her reflections on events, in italics. I suspect that many of the E-mails are drawn from those that Boustani herself may have received during the conflict, since her professional life strongly resembles her narrator ’s. She is a professor at the University of Lebanon (with appointments also in Angers and Paris) who has had visiting university positions around the world and who specializes in women’s studies and in linguistics. Her previous scholarly publications have concentrated on Colette, Andrée Chedid, Francophone literature , and gender studies. Like her narrator, she is concerned with the problems, roles, and possibilities of women’s lives in the Middle East and elsewhere. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit CALLE-GRUBER, MIREILLE. Consolation. Paris: Différence, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7291-1893-8. Pp. 192. 15 a. Dès l’entame, ce roman met le lecteur face à la difficulté de construire la trame d’une intrigue mise à mal par la barbarie martiale du monde contemporain. Pourtant, des images font surface, des bribes de phrases, des mots à la dérive qui signalent comme un besoin de faire texte et de reconstruire une mémoire, collective et personnelle à la fois. Cette mémoire serait d’abord celle d’artistes pris dans la tourmente de la guerre et de la déportation, mais aussi celle d’une société qui a besoin, maintenant plus que jamais, de dire et redire la parole des morts et des disparus. Dès lors, mots et phrases se précipitent, se bousculent au portillon de la mémoire, comme si le besoin de dire le trauma, dire le drame, était trop fort et menaçait de déborder la conscience, à la manière du peintre juif recherché par la Gestapo qui lui aussi choisit de peindre, de continuer à peindre malgré et contre 980 FRENCH REVIEW 85.5 tout, contre l’absence, contre la disparition, contre le néant. Mais tenter de faire entendre la parole des morts ou des disparus n’est pas une mince affaire. L’écriture fragmentée, éclatée de Consolation exige du lecteur une attention sans faille et malgré cela, ce dernier perd plus souvent que de coutume le fil d’une intrigue qui a du mal à exister. Certes, c’est l’absence d’histoire et son impossibilité qui donnent au texte sa raison d’être. On ne peut...