La deuxième vie d’Aurélien Moreau par Tatiana Arfel

Abstract

Reviews 253 notice throughout is that this work bears witness to the process of learning a foreign language.We smile as the child tells of her preparation for departure and we empathize as she struggles with the French vowels that she has to pronounce “sous mon nez” (11). The challenges of learning French drive this novel and we who have had this experience will readily understand the phases of frustration and of joy, including that moment when, like the narrator, we heard the new language“pour de vrai”(19). Once in France, she knows that language sets her apart, but with great determination she goes to school, watches television, makes French friends and even borrows a book by Queneau from the library. Her desire to learn is strong and her passion for the language is palpable: “Que les voyelles sous le nez finissent par me révéler tous leurs secrets” (54). Little by little, she feels the language becoming a part of her, and the glorious day arrives when she says: “J’ai pensé et parlé en français en même temps” (117).An additional pleasure for readers is that we see, through the poetry of Alcoba’s writing, that many secrets of the French language have, in fact, been revealed. This novel is built of anecdotes; chapters have titles and stories pop up in what might seem to be random order but this device is very effective in showing how our lives are organized around narratives that coalesce to form the person we become. We hear how she and her father read Maeterlinck’s La vie des abeilles so as to share a topic in their censored letters. We also know that this reading touches her in other ways, enriching her French and giving her tools to help her live in a new culture. That she dares to ask how Maeterlinck can state that blue is the favorite color of bees shows our narrator as an active participant in her reading and her life and here, as in other stories, we are reminded that she is a little girl trying to find herself and her place. Whether she is telling about her mother’s job, the cafeteria, the class bully, or wallpaper, our narrator provides a glimpse of her world. Blanc-Mesnil and its poverty may be far from the Paris she had imagined but her experience is rich. Her love for French is contagious and her journey, we know, is far from over. Students reading this novel will find a kindred spirit and readers who have learned to live in another culture will see parts of their stories in Le bleu des abeilles. Metropolitan State University of Denver Ann Williams Arfel, Tatiana. La deuxième vie d’Aurélien Moreau. Paris: Corti, 2013. ISBN 978-27143 -1115-3. Pp. 317. 20 a. Aurélien Moreau stands accused of a crime against“Faites Comme ChezVous,”the company he managed until his“arrest.”Of the testimonies comprising the novel’s first section, one comes from Alphonse Lambert, company owner and Aurélien’s father-inlaw . He mainly touts the company’s innovation in security programs that ward off potential intruders with elaborate illusions of presence (i.e., sounds of a dinner party, a couple’s argument) when no one is home. Of Aurélien, he says little except that his son-in-law’s lunacy shows in the only idea he ever had,which was to develop a program for generating the illusion of absence when people are at home. Other“witnesses”also have much to say about themselves but little for Aurélien, immediate family members being no exception, with his oldest son saying sarcastically:“Aurélien Moreau. Je ne l’ai jamais rencontré”(32).A former psychiatrist sees not a lunatic but a“normopathe”in Aurélien, too normal to be normal perhaps, but “[c]orrecte” (35) like a robot. Thereafter , only Aurélien’s words appear in ever-evolving journals from the six months prior to and the nine months following his crime. At first, his entries are like lists, each headed by month, date, and saint’s name, followed by familiar people (or occasional...