Céline Curiol

“They have known each other for a long time. She has never quite been able to recall the moment when they met, the place, the precise day, whether she shook his hand or they kissed on the cheek. Nor has she ever thought to ask him. She does have a first memory, though. As she was climbing into her coat in the narrow hallway of an unkempt apartment, she had caught his look of distress. The woman he had flirted with all evening was refusing to leave with him. He was trying to persuade her with an insistent barrage of words, which fell to pieces in the face of the majestic creature. She thought the idea of being suddenly deprived on the object of his affections must have been more than he could bear just then. And seeing him this way, in love, had moved her. She had slipped between the two of them and said, I’m off. But he had not replied.”

Sigh.

One of the more difficult books I read this month. I was torn between feeling sorry for and being just so irritated by the nameless main character.

Somehow I ended up reading yet another story about a lonely love stuck woman. In love, foolishly oh foolishly so, with another woman’s man.

And she feels it so.

As I suppose does anyone in an unrequited kind of love. It hurts so much yet she cannot let him go.

There is a wistful kind of romance to this story. She is that voice you hear announcing the trains at the Gare du Nord. She has hardly any friends. And seems to be a magnet for weird men. She pretends to be a prostitute, she shoplifts, she is locked into the apartment of a man she had met in a cafe. And there is that hint of a childhood trauma, which is only detailed at the end. She is obviously desperate for attention. Yet she does get people’s attention everyday when she makes her announcements. But hers is a disembodied voice. One that will never be recognized. She makes all these announcements for people departing and arriving, yet she has never left France. It is a rather claustrophobic world that she lives in. I can hardly get a breath in.

So I pity her and yet I cannot stand her. She makes all these infuriating decisions. And I keep wondering, what? What is she doing? Why is she so naive? So foolish? And so I struggle to make my way through this book. I start and stop reading it, because I want also to read more of Curiol’s Parisian world and of her way of noticing the everyday things. And who doesn’t love Paris – or at least the thought of it. Although in the nameless woman’s Paris, there seems to be a predator lurking around every corner (!).

“The Jardin du Luxembourg and its hodge-podge of tourists. Rings of chairs arranged as if for the conversations of invisible characters. It’s up to anyone out for a walk to imagine, according to the layout of these metals remains, what went on here before his arrival.”

So while I didn’t quite enjoy reading it. No that doesn’t sound right. Maybe it’s more like that it was such a challenge reading Voice Over that I am surprised, glad that I managed to finish it.
It was a relief when Voice Over finally came to an end, but voice is vibrant, authentic, exacting. Paul Auster says it so much better in the foreword:

“Curiol’s eye for detail is so sharp, so exact in its renderings of the world beyond her character’s skin, that even as the narrative concentrates on the actions of a single individual, we are simultaneously given a crystal-clear picture of French society at large – the new France, the France of the early twenty-first century.”
… (lisätietoja)

Prenez un fond de 1984, ajoutez-y une bonne dose de Fahrenheit 451, assaisonnez d'une pincée de Kafka, modernisez le tout et vous obtenez Permission. Mon raccourci est un peu facile mais il s'agit bien, comme pour ses illustres prédécesseurs, d'une dystopie. L'histoire se déroule ici au sein d'une entreprise qui officie dans le domaine politique. Elle joue un rôle dans le processus complexe des négociations entre états — nous en savons quelque chose en tant qu’européens.Le protagoniste de cette histoire est chargé d’établir les comptes rendus des débats et des réunions. Il va sans dire que ses écrits se doivent d’être impartiaux et rédigés de façon formelle. L’écriture réside donc au coeur de son activité professionnelle. Il utilise également à des fins personnelles puisqu’il rédige également un journal. C’est au travers de ce journal que nous découvrons l’histoire.

A mon avis, ce choix narratif n’est pas sans conséquences négatives. Dans cet univers dystopique où les sentiments sont réduits à leur plus simple expression et où la littérature de fiction n’existe pas — ou plus —, la prose d’un journal n’est pas forcément la plus exaltée et la plus enthousiasmante pour le lecteur. Elle s’apparente un peu à un long compte rendu — normal me direz-vous puisque c’est son métier. Oui mais ce procédé qui a du sens et qui joue un rôle non négligeable dans la perception par le lecteur de l’univers n’en est pas moins assez rébarbatif. Le travers est le même que lorsque l’on tente la délicate entreprise de confier la narration à un enfant (Le bizarre incident du chien pendant la nuit, Extrêmement fort et incroyablement près ou encore L'Attrape-coeurs en sont des exemples pas forcément ratés). Le registre narratif limité est un carcan, une contrainte pour l’auteur qui peut vite devenir un gros inconvénient pour le lecteur. J'en parle en connaissance de cause car j'ai abandonné la lecture avant la fin, dommage. Permission est un roman d’anticipation dystopique intéressant et bien réalisé mais que je n’ai malheureusement pas trouvé passionnant. http://www.aubonroman.com/2012/10/permission-par-celine-curiol.html… (lisätietoja)