Eric faye , Nagasaki, Stock, 2010, Prix du roman de l’académie française

Ce petit ouvrage est un chef d'œuvre de concision , de sobriété et de tragique absolu qui se déroule au Japon, dans la ville de Nagasaki . Que fait-on quand on est sans logis et en fin de droits, voilà une question qui se pose dans tous les pays avancés où les personnes de 50 ans sont larguées par le systeme et ont trop honte pour rester dans leur ancien quartier . On erre à l'aventure et on essaie de survivre ; on peut tomber sur une habitation vide la plupart du temps où on peut s'y infiltrer tranquillement. C'est ce qui se passe ici , mais ce n'est pas une action anodine même si l''intrus est d'une discrétion absolue et ne prend rien ni n'abime rien. Immédiatement on se heurte à la violation du domicile et de la personne qui a le droit de se sentir seule et non espionnée, surtout dans les sociétés occidentales( dont ls Japon fait partie ) où l'autonomie et vie privée sont mises en valeur. L'intrus , condamnée, fera 5 mois de prison .

Le personnage Shimurra qui a été violé dans son intimité ( quoiqu'il vivie seul) est tellement perturbé quand il éecouvre cette clandestine grace à un webcam, qu'il doit quitter son domicile et déménager.Shimura est un isolé qui a abandonné tout lien social quasiment mais il veut etre seul , tranquille chez lui et il a été très déstabilisé . Nous ne le voyons que de l'extérieur, mais nous comprenons l'importance capitale d'un domicile privé dans une vie humaine.

La deuxieme partie nous livre l'âme de l'intruse sans logis, qui veut s'expliquer par une petite confession. Elle a 58 ans et n'est nullement criminelle . Elle a adoré habiter dans cet appartement tranquille et s'y reposer dans le calme. Elle a tout regardé et fouillé tout, mais elle a respecté le lieu. Tous ses malheurs proviennent de 2 choses dans sa vie : avoir été obligée de quitter la maison familiale à 8 ans et avoir perdu ses parents à 16 ans , dans un glissement de terrain.Tout s'est écroulé et rien dans sa vie n'a tenu, elle a même été une revolutionnaire rouge …

Mais la maison de Shimura a été un baume inespéré , un paradis retrouvé, car c'était la même maison perdue de son enfance qui existait toujours .. Notre héroine n' a pas honte de ce qu'elle a fait .Non, elle avait plus le droit d'y être que Shimura lui-même car elle l'aimait cette delicieuse maison, le plus profondément des deux , ayant même retouvé sa chambre de petite fille d'où elle regardait tout Nagasaki ! Proust ne parle que des lieux si profondément mythiques de son enfance d'où toute son œuvre procède, et nous savons tous que la perte de domicile est la plus indéfendable des tragédies sociales actuelles.Ne pas être pauvre est impératif, voilà la raison d'une survie possible

Que dire à cela ? Ce petit livre est une merveille et sans aucun prosélytisme,ou humanitaire larmoyant ; parfait ,troublant et désolant au cœur du lecteur.

Ian Mc Ewan, Cement Garden,1978 and Vintage, 2006

One of his earliest books and already a socially potent work of a future tragic novelist of our day ; it is about the dissimulated death of a Mother by her 4 kids who bury her in the basement. This horrendous tale is precipitated as always by a crisis which has been long standing : the state of psychotic isolation of a family even when both parents were alive.No neighbors, no friends, no family or relatives around them .Mc Ewan knows the working class and its poverty when either enemployment or psychopathic behavior strikes ; here the father who is feared by all and a loner decides to cement his tiny garden so that no unsightly grass will ever grow again… No one opposes him but luckily he dies accidentally a little while after. The mother, more human , but weak , becomes ill probably with cancer and slowly dies one day in her bed. The horrified kids , unable to face social services , decide to bury her corpse under a pile of cement and not mention her demise .Anti social,un-civilized,incestuous, dabbing in drugs, they start a sort of anarchic communal life where no one works, goes to school or respects any order . Soon a state of decayed civilisation , a phenomenon that fascinates Mc Ewan installs itself in this un- hinged social unit headed by the whorish older sister.

This is the remarkable aspect of this atrocious story which eventually ends up with the arrival of the police and its punishing arsenal on the premises : the cadaver of the Mother had been glimpsed through the fragmented cement in the basement…Can one imagine any thing more macabre or gory , yet, the tale is sober, not dramatic but cold, detached, almost claiming a normalcy for a group of abandoned children never reared properly, left to unavoidable savagery and vagrancy , without guidance or adult authority at all .A poignant fake family is there , in front of our eyes.

These families are not that uncommon apparently in our urban jungles, with whites , Irish or immigrants alike, who just drift and fall into crime almost by chance and survive,ignored by all. » Cement Garden » a beginning opus of note for Mc ewan , a future writer of great dramatic strength who would be giving the amazing « On Chesil Beach » 20 years later.

    

Michael Cunningham , By night Fall, fourth Estate, London, 2010

A Typical tale of the mid fourties, or identity crisis , which takes place amongst well off New Yorkers who wander about the level of success in their lives so far, and how happy they really are . It is quite insufferable , very narcissistic , even exasperating when one thinks of the amount of real suffering that takes place routinely everywhere on this earth.What is it about ?

Well, it is an excellent book, marvelously funny in the dialogues and portraits taken from the contemporary art scene in New York, where the main character Peter, operates professionally and survives tremendous competition since he is a middle range gallery owner and not a top notch one. The cynicism necessary to this job is as amazing as the amount of money required to buy the horrendous objects offered as » oeuvre d'art »,  to these international collectorsthat we meet, especially the Chinese ones . That aspect alone justifies reading the book , viewing this world of sharks and fools, » nouveaux riches », every everyone of them,who can only outdo the next person as rich as them.

The problem in the hero's life is a beautiful boy, ( his bother in law actually), in his twenties : idle ,homeless, jobless, a dilettante, a wasted youth who takes drugs , foot loose and unable to occupy himself …. he appears as a house guest , and is naturally an homosexual temptation . Jesus , another one of those homo dramas which constantly obsess writers these days and harrass the reader , one could scream .Well, Peter enjoys a multiple crisis ; he questions his private happiness as a husband of a quite remarquable and snobby wife but also questions the point of his grotesque work that eventually appears to him as a fraud and a farce …he thinks that he loves the boy . He is lucid but dumb at the same time  , thinks of fleeing to a greek island with Mizzi, the beautifu lboy,,as a solution to his unease, What a pathetic joke this is really !

The real drama of his and his wife's life exists though in the guise of their daughter, who has become at age twenty, a decided failure ; she is a bar maid in Boston, having dropped out of college and living with an unemployed fat female loser . None of the two parents can talk to her and make her change her mind ; she wants to be a nothing and be a living contrast to her parents lives, and refuses to talk . It is utterly sad and without answer , an horribly silent suffering : the failed parents syndrome in all its horror is exposed here nd hurts deeply.Cunningham depicts a certain breed of highly educated people who seem to exist in our western cities, urban adults who behave like adolescents , selfish and spoiled in an unconscious world of their own. Why is our civilization arrived to such a failed state, an utter decadence bordering on the absurd ? Or is it the fate of all decaying civilizations to abandon their children , one could ask. Well, probably : no one has raised them really.

A tough read but entertaining nevertheless , and also a tragic novel as so many of Cunningham books are in their aftermath .An author of the deep difficulty of being.