A bright future
of Pierre Lemaitre
Calmann-LEVY, 592 P., 23,90 €
It took two years to get news from the Pelletier family. Fans of Pierre Lemaitre – Goncourt 2013 with Goodbye up there – have not forgotten anything about the two previous volumes, which already told the epic of Louis Pelletier, boss of a soap factory in Beirut (The Big World)and the aspiration to the Parisian life of its descendants (Silence and anger). The third part of the tetralogy took place in 1959, marked, as the previous ones, by the rapid developments of the Thirty Glorious Years. The economy is flourishing, the audiovisual is essential, the Cold War divides Europe … What to dream of A bright futuretitle of this third opus, even though the Pelletier family will meet many vicissitudes.
Those who already know them will find Louis, the aging patriarch, his wife Angèle, Jean, the eldest son a little flaw and poorly married to Geneviève, François, brilliant journalist, and the discreet Hélène, the last. The others will not be lost, the novel that can be read independently. It opens with the prospect of a business trip to Prague, on the other side of the iron curtain. You don’t need Pierre Lemaitre, from the thriller, to forge a plot made of spies and state secrets. Although we do not improvise an intelligence agent, and that some of the characters hold more nickel -plated feet. In the middle of the Cold War, one of the pelletier sons will pay the price, engaged after careful reflection in a state affair, while his sister-in-law tries to capture the family business.
The specter of nuclear threat
The novel has no exhaustive claim, there is no question of the Fifth Republic or the Algerian War, but the nuclear threat hovers. From worldwide business to daily life, the soap operator brings little stories to twirl. At the dawn of the 1960s, “Technological progress allows the housewife to spare itself”, With the advent of the seb casserole or iron. Ménie Grégoire before the hour, Hélène launches a vesperal show of confidences on the antenna. The family business is developing, but at what price? Everyone has their cases of conscience: “We start by accepting things that we do not want, we end up accepting things that we condemn”, warns one of the family members. Louis, chief of the clan which he tries to bring together, feels tensions, guesses the blunders: “Their return to France had appeared to him as a new life, instead of which everything had broken down at a confusing speed. He lived in permanent anxiety concerning the future. »»
If the family council widens, everyone has never been so alone, put to the test, sometimes dragging their secret guilt. There are twists and turns as in our TV series, made of secondary characters which, suddenly, arise, such as a libidinous neighbor or a nun in Cornette. We thought everything would be better and better, but nothing is certain: “Bienfaitor technology, a programmed vector of progress, was going to become a source of concern, the first of which would remain the most ignorant. »» We will have to wait for the fourth volume of this romantic fresco to learn more about the future of the Pelletier family. And on that of the world, maybe not so radiant.
(tagstotranslate) Critic book
