What is the common point between a father and his children leaving Paris, a banker who takes himself for Rex Imperator and undertakes the hike of the century with two companions in Brittany, a recomposed family, enraged with freedom, and a woman in search of new benchmarks on the American West Coast? They flee, they flee the world. Our world. They flee to survive, looking for a pacified company if it exists. They flee because they have no other possible choice. Thus characters from Fabrice Humbert and François Gagey, protagonists of two very black novels and of rare violence.
On the other side of life is nothing more than a cry. A long cry on almost 250 pages, a cry that never ends and has nothing to envy to that of Munch. Fabrice Humbert pushes a howl. It is that of his hero, a man in Olympian calm. He recounts his breakaway from Paris with her two young children. He rushes at full speed to the Republic of Jura, where he hopes to find a semblance of peace.
A stolen car, thousands of corpses, fire, carcasses, scrap, detonations and everywhere devastation. Essence is rare as in Mad Max. The little girl is called Alice, her blond and curly hair panicked everyone she meets. Who are they? Soldiers, crazy, murderers. Monsters and sometimes angels. But the angels do not survive hell long. The father has only one idea in mind, save Alice and Alexandre, the children of misfortune. He is ready for anything. Especially at worst. The man with Olympian calm has become an ogre.
Fabrice Humbert has lively flayed writing and breathless rhythm. He draws up the picture of a devastated society whose characters still believe in humanity. Sweet naivety? The immense talent of the writer splashes this western with a crazy modernity.
Nuclear explosion
In Combustionsfrom François Gagey, it is a nuclear power plant that ignites, radiates and devastates Brittany in its entirety. They are three misfortunes of misfortune, embarked on a hike supposed to put them on foot. The detox is so fashionable in 2025. Much more than a nuclear explosion. They take deserted roads, the region is contaminated, soon in quarantine. There is no longer a soul who lives, barely a German tourist who understands nothing and wanders like a sad clown. They still hope to get out of it, fools!
Who are we in the face of collapse?
Paul, a business banker and the gang mentor, knows that it’s damn. After all, it is exactly what he wants, he who did everything, seen everything, he who is getting lost in a spiral of money, power, sex and drugs, he slaps the beautiful world. The only thing he has not yet faced is death. That’s good, she is there, fiery, bubbling, incandescent, she gave an appointment to hikers at the very heart of the Flamanville reactor.
But more than nuclear deflagration, it is the character of Paul who devastates everything in his path. His unleashing is matched only by the end of a world which he dared to reject. The author offers us the portrait of a crazy who chose to face stronger elements than him, a man with rare cynicism, to whom the disgust will give wings. Who are we faced with collapse? François Gagey, an awesome primary rod, responds to it with a passion that should mark in the red iron this literary school year.
Drunk of freedom
Chaos hymnswhat a magnificent title for this novel with prose full of grace and fury, rage and sweetness, which is as much from lyrical song as gusts of a machine gun. A deluge of fifty-four days has won everything, the earth does not rely, the heads of state are affected by madness, man has become a wild animal, carried by his instinct. Théo Gracques is indifferent to everything, he found a refuge, an island, his island. He meets a woman there, Chloé, and her two children, Joan and Hugo, soon a blended family. There are four of them, they are drunk with freedom and tranquility. But is it a possibility? The island is threatened, they undertake a crazy journey through what remains of the universe. Europe is on fire and blood; America, land of exile, still offers a paradise to those who manage to cross Ellis Island.
It is a baroque road movie, a choir of Desperado, a murderous fugue on an unknown road. Peace is illusory. Théo understood this, affirming with despair: we are intended “To go around in the arena of violence that goes beyond us”. Théo is a poet, Théo is nourished by Kerouac and Ginsberg, Théo knows that the end is near, remorse has been his companion in misfortune for so long. What romantic fresco with poetic reading, even when it comes to bloodthirsty robberies!
On the other side of lifeFabrice Humbert, Calmann Lévy, 200 pages, 19.90 euros.
CombustionsFrançois Gagey, Albin Michel, 352 pages, 21.90 euros.
Chaos hymnsMathieu Belezi, Robert Laffont, 400 pages, 23 euros.
