Le défaut du ciel by Philippe Renonçay

Abstract

on ne sait si on mangera ou non, “accomplir quelque chose, inventer un changement , contribuer à un mieux-être” (38)? Vue l’envergure de ces questions, il est difficile de ne pas regretter l’absence totale de réponses—fussent-elles hâtives ou soutenues—dans un roman qui se termine subitement sur l’effondrement et l’hébétude. Boise State University (ID) Jason Herbeck RENONÇAY, PHILIPPE. Le défaut du ciel. Paris: Libella, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7529-0594-9. Pp. 134. 15 a. In his fifth novel, Renonçay gives us a polar with an investigative journalist as the protagonist. In search of a former acquaintance who has disappeared, Clovis Bietel sometimes speaks in the first person and sometimes is the subject of an omniscient narrator. Thomas Heller is the object of the search begun by his mother who had read Bietel’s investigative writing and thought that his friendship with her son would provide clues to his whereabouts. The plot of this masterful tale centers on Heller’s link with a former paratrooper in the Indochina war. The veteran, Peter Damian, was Heller’s neighbor and leads Bietel to discover the crime behind the torture and assassination of Damian. In the process, Clovis finds that Damian’s military identity in the Resistance and then in Indochina was associated with the pseudonym Roland Sasre. Both Heller and Clovis return to Vietnam for clues about what Sasre did there. Heller’s mother pays Clovis to find the truth about the strange connection of her son with his neighbor’s fate. Heller traveled to Vietnam and then could not be found after his return. Clovis follows. Heller and Clovis resemble each other to the point where they are even called Siamese twins. As the story proceeds, they in fact become opposite sides of the same coin, that is, a Janus-like pair of acquaintances looking in opposite directions . While Clovis is trying to tie the past to the present, Heller was focused on rewriting the past. As Clovis follows Heller to Vietnam, readers encounter the ambiance of the remnants of colonization, existing without recognition of the American conflict there. Instead, what we have is the French influence, one might even say hegemony , in Indochina. Sasre was not only a soldier in Indochina but a proponent of indigenous self-rule in the face of the invasions by the Vietminh. Clovis tries to find out why Sasre was so committed to this rule. Sasre had many loyal friends who would give eyewitness accounts about his support. These accounts help Clovis explain the mystery of why Sasre changed his identity, effectively partly erasing what he did in Indochina. This change also fascinated Heller who sought to establish the links between Damian and Sasre. The reader becomes involved in interpreting the palimpsest constituted by various documents that are laid out within the narrative, as if they could explain the mystery by themselves. The truths of Heller’s location and the reasons for Damian’s murder are of course intertwined. Along the way, the reader learns that Clovis had a difficult friendship with Heller. Letters from Heller’s mother to Clovis, police records of phone conversations, news reports, eyewitness records all become proofs of what happened , without giving away the deceptiveness of appearances. Clovis probes, and makes errors to be corrected, as his assumptions are either verified or discounted throughout. The zigzag process of trying to make the pieces of the puzzle fit is an Reviews 1301 intriguing method for storytelling and for detective work. There is no linear progression of the plot. Rather the reader moves along as if looking over Clovis’s shoulder at photos, documentary films, and other apparent evidence to piece together the past. There is talent in Renonçay’s writing style. Trinity University (TX) Roland A. Champagne SÉVIGNY, MARIE-ÈVE. Intimité et autres objets fragiles. Montréal: Triptyque, 2012. ISBN 978-2-89031-744-4. Pp. 100. $18 Can. Sévigny’s Intimité may be slight in size, but its short stories are not without a certain moral weight. As the publisher’s insert announces, the stories explore “la frontière entre la vie privée et...