Le cas Malaussène I. Ils m’ont menti par Daniel Pennac

Abstract

Reviews 251 new novel is filled with impassive, irony-laced prose and wry humor. Even if one wishes to follow the current of life, it can lead you to worthwhile destinations. Bradley University (IL) Alexander Hertich Pennac, Daniel. Le cas Malaussène I. Ils m’ont menti. Paris: Gallimard, 2017. ISBN 978-2-07-014231-6. Pp. 596. After an eighteen-year hiatus, the Malaussène clan returns with their surreal world of linguistic humor and social satire. Tribal brother and uncle Benjamin, who raised the children on bedtime stories that would be unbelievable were they not the truth, is now suffering from empty nest syndrome. Still working as a professional scapegoat, Benjamin is charged by his publishing house with shielding a “true story” novelist whose family has attempted to murder him after learning of his revelations. The isolation of Benjamin’s country home gives both characters a moment of peace; the author to finish his work safe from harm, Benjamin to ruminate on the passage of time. Trying to stay out of trouble (and as always failing to do so), Benjamin attempts unsuccessfully to ignore the latest scandal in the news, the kidnapping of former CEO Georges Lapietá, whose golden parachute has become his ransom. Despite a disappointingly simple plotline and the frustrating name-dropping of (both real and fictitious) characters whose identities have to be looked up in a lengthy index at the back of the book, Pennac’s novel is still a delight. Shifting viewpoints and narrative styles rife with multi-lingual wordplay and slang hearken to the popular literature in which the Malaussène saga had its roots. The many colorful characters, such as Judge Talvern (Benjamin’s sister Verdun), who goes to great pains to make herself ugly before going to court, and Ariana Lapietá who, after hours of daily makeup and hairdressing, unknowingly bears a striking resemblance to Claudia Cardinale, simultaneously charm and provide biting social commentary. Although the social analysis in Pennac’s novel is not innovative, the means with which he explores how the harsh reality of the contemporary bio-novel has replaced popular fiction in literary taste are irrefutably Pennac’s. Technology’s immediacy and sensationalism have supplanted faith in communal collaboration (Benjamin) with a self-centered individualism that takes pleasure in vitriolic denunciation and accusation (the author whom Benjamin is protecting). Through structural mise en abyme and convincing rhetoric, Pennac questions the distinction between perceived authenticity and fiction. As Chief Inspector Coudrier, an aspiring novelist, points out, a detective with a crime to solve is no different from a storyteller weaving a text. Both seek to arrive at the truth by (re)constructing a plausible sequence of events and elucidating motives to assign responsibility. However, as Pennac’s novel demonstrates, the search for coherence is full of pitfalls and erroneous inferences. The novel cautions readers of reality and fiction alike that what convincingly appears as truth can be misleading. Thus, although some critics argue that the Malaussène series is a literature of the past, the analytical vision this fiction brings of the contemporary present is as entertaining and thought-provoking as reality literature, without the danger of inciting readers to a violence all too prevalent in real life. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius Redouane, Najib. L’envers du destin. Paris: Vérone, 2016. ISBN 979-10-284-0183-2. Pp. 388. This novel has a richly-described cultural setting that includes the history of the Jewish diaspora in Morocco and depictions of the community’s celebrations, food, clothing, and customs—much of it explained further in an ample glossary of Hebrew/ Moroccan terms. Less pleasantly, the novel also portrays inflexible religious practices, unbridgeable divides (Muslim-Jewish, Israeli-Palestinian, Sephardic-Ashkenazi, etc.), and a volatile political history that seems bent on eliminating said cultural richness and variety.Against this backdrop, Mimouna, the youngest daughter of a Jewish Moroccan family living in Séfrou in the 1960s, tells her story. She is ravishingly beautiful, headstrong , passionate, and held as the apple of her father’s eye. Much to her detriment, she is unable and unwilling to please any other family member, especially her mother. Mimouna’s brief though unconsummated...