Un loup pour l'homme by Brigitte Giraud

Abstract

Reviewed by: Un loup pour l'homme by Brigitte Giraud Jane E. Evans Giraud, Brigitte. Un loup pour l'homme. Flammarion, 2017. ISBN 978-2-08-138916-8. Pp. 246. In the 21 years since the French government announced that the Algerian "conflict" had, indeed, been a "war," fictional and non-fictional works on the subject have abounded. Un loup pour l'homme, Brigitte Giraud's ninth novel, is one such effort. Giraud, who received the Goncourt de la nouvelle in 2007 and the Prix Giono in 2009, demonstrates her craft again in this fiction recounting the Algerian tour of duty of French Army nurse Antoine in 1960. Married to Lila, now pregnant, Antoine is torn between his obligation to his spouse and to his country. Although informed by his doctor that military service in Algeria for "maintenir l'ordre" (19) cannot compare to a war, Antoine, his fellow soldiers, and Lila gradually discover the very different truth of the enlisted men engaging in violent confrontations against the Algerian independence seekers and then suffering the physical, emotional, and psychological consequences of executing their assignments. Giraud excels in portraying how the soldiers cope with their duties. Antoine's hospital work exempts him from combat. However, he sees the atrocities inflicted on the human body firsthand as the wounded men arrive on stretchers. Unable to speak of these experiences in his letters to Lila, Antoine draws pictures of Algiers and the port instead. Nor can he discuss his experiences with his friend Martin, the company cook, with whom he shares fewer laughs and cigarettes as the "guerre invisible" (47) or unspoken conflict intensifies. Whereas Antoine and his wife choose for her to come to Algeria from France and set up house as they await the birth of their first child, Martin, qui "parle en tête à tête avec une salamandre" (153), typifies the lonely soldier who spirals into depression. Fascinated by the French government's silencing of the true nature of the Algerian incidents and the subsequently widespread devastation that the soldiers must also keep secret, Antoine is drawn to Oscar, an amputee whose elective mutism demonstrates his way of distancing himself from the war's horrors. As his nurse and later his friend, Antoine shares in the image of the wolf that has predominated Oscar's life. In this instance, as with her other characters, author Giraud skillfully weaves her theme into the development of the relationship between the two men. For Antoine, the friendship with Oscar proves to be another life lesson on the destruction left in the wake of battle. Not only does Un loup pour l'homme emphasize the foreignness of French soldiers on Algerian soil and their disorientation vis-à-vis their unnamed war, it reiterates this metaphor in their estrangement from their fellow man, loved ones, and ultimately, themselves. Wanting desperately to turn the page on the horrific events of the war, many are forced to concede: "[L]a guerre d'Algérie n'a pas eu lieu" (242). [End Page 209] Jane E. Evans University of Texas, El Paso Copyright © 2018 American Association of Teachers of French