LA REVOLTE Clara Dupont-Monod

"La révolte" Clara Dupont-Monod

The novel tells the story (the author herself notes in the end that she did not plan a historical novel), presents details of the life of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine known as a rebel in her time. The Queen of France, thanks to Louis VII, and later Queen of England alongside Henry II Plantagenet, mother of the famous Richard Lion Heart and Jan No Earth. We get to know her fate with the help of Ryszard himself, who is the main narrator of the novel (but not the only one). We get to know the queen's ambitions, the struggles she led to come and stay in power. Ryszard, who is quite warlike, even bloody, is torn between an absolute desire to satisfy his mother's will to oppose his father and a sense of belonging to the family.

In this tribute to his son's love for his mother, Ryszard says what led him to lead the army against his father. Clara Dupont-Monod, by Ryszard, also describes baron fights, lies, treason, religious or political games, but also the important role played by women and the war against Saladin in the East.

The novel is written in an interesting way, the narrator interweaves memories with the present tense, one can get the impression that along with it we follow the footsteps of the queen. There were, however, fragments that made something wrong in Ryszard: sometimes there were comparisons of medieval times to times closer to us. They were not explicitly marked, but when explaining some traditions, for example, the knight's author compared them to our customs, including referring to the meaning of a word.

Despite everything, I think that the novel is good, worth attention and reading

"Frère d'âme" David Diop

DAVID DIOP, "FRERE D'AME"
Frère d'âme is a war-themed novel. You can also find psychological elements in it, thanks to which the story seems more complete, the hero's attitude easier to understand, and thus the whole is interesting.
The book tells the story of a young Senegalese - Alfie Ndiaye. The man fought on the French side during the First World War, which he did not want to go. He enlisted for a friend who after the war wanted to be someone big and important. Fate, however, wanted differently and already in the first chapter we see that Mademba dies in agony and, although he asks Alfa for relief in suffering, he can not get to kill a friend, what he utters himself to the end of the book. The Senegalese is initially considered a hero, a brave soldier, but he himself can not forgive himself for failing to do his "plus que frère" at such a moment. With time, he becomes brutal, and people start looking at him like a madman. Quite a large role is played by seven severed hands of killed enemies, which Alpha carries with him. When, after the war, he goes to Dr. François, in the form of pictures, because he does not speak French, he tells his story. From now on, we discover the life of an Alpha from before the war. We see him leave his mother, who went to look for her family, how he was adopted by the Mademba family, and his father regretted it. Together with the protagonist, we experience the first love elation.
The past of the man and the post-war period are intertwined, but they still form a coherent whole.
One by one, we get to know different faces of the Alpha. A desperate friend who can not alleviate the suffering of Madembie, a brave, though brutal soldier of the French army, an abandoned child who wants to find a mother, a faithful friend and a tender lover.
The first-person narrative allows you to better understand the history and to understand the feelings that torment the Alpha, as well as its behavior. The language of the novel is simple, just like the hero who is not educated. Form reminiscent of the main character's confession, as if the man wanted to absolve himself from his deeds.
I think that 'Frère d'âme' is a novel worth reading. It touches topics that we do not think about everyday. Moral problems faced by a soldier, his perception of the world, as well as the influence of the past on the present. All this can be found in this novel.

"La Vraie vie"

ADELINE DIEUDONNÉ "LA VRAIE VIE"

Honestly, the term of the genre that characterizes this novel is not easy for me. On the one hand, the book is embedded in the realities of reality and seems to be moral, but at the same time you can not ignore the whole of its climate, which surrounds magic and some extraordinary character, which gives it the characteristics of a fantastic novel. Nevertheless, I would not call it a fantastic novel, because the "magic" that I am talking about is not intrusive and dominant - we do not have dragons, flying fairies, elves and a completely different reality. What's more, because we are dealing with a first-person narrative, and our narrator is a little girl endowed with unusual imagination, it is difficult to estimate how presented the world corresponds to real events around her, and how much is the product of her lush fantasy. When I was wondering how to call such a kind of novel, I remembered that I had read about magical reality once. Refreshing myself what magical realism stands out, I am willing to risk and say that perhaps this word reflects the genre with which we are dealing. It also speaks for the fact that Dieudonné is a Belgian, and Belgian literature is a large fantasy heritage, dividing into various interesting subgenres.

I am certainly inclined to call La vraie vie an initiation novel. The heroine undergoes a huge change. The reader begins the novel from the relationship of a small, carefree girl, and ends up reading with a picture of a young, but still much more mature girl. It is worth noting that our narrator is mature from the first pages, but it gets stronger with each side.

"Quand Dieu boxait en amateur" GUY BOLEY

"Quand Dieu boxait en amateur" GUY BOLEY

The book at the very beginning made me quite negative about it: I personally do not like the first-person narrative, which we find from the first sentences. To my surprise, we quickly forget about it, because the work focuses on the narrator's memories. He tells the story of his father, his way through life. We start from the end of my father's life: from his death, illness. Later, however, the story goes on chronologically: from the youngest years, through interest in the title box, to the end of the main character's days.

An interesting theme are reflections on the role of the Church: the best friend René (the father of the narrator) becomes a priest and as a theater enthusiast tries to enrich the parish with a noteworthy theater art. However, there is a clash with the conservative pastor, who for years has been presenting the same during the parish festival and considers it the only thing clean and worthy of a beautiful church.

Anyway, the father becomes a boxer, which causes his closest fears: despite his achievements in amateur battles, i.e. the French championship, he feels that he is becoming too old for an amateur play, and he is not fit for work in this profession. The chance to dispel doubts and find a good way is given to him by his friend, who offers him the role of Jesus in the Passion, which he intends to exhibit in the parish. There are new ambitions of the main character.

The song is written in an interesting language, exceptionally rich (especially thanks to René's love of writing unknown words from Larousse), containing a dose of quite specific sense of humor, but he has, however, amused the "L'église Saint-Martin des Chaprais est assez laide" several times: il est préférable d'avoir la foi avant d'y entrer. " I am not sure if this is a book worth distinction, but everything will turn out to be read in comparison with other works. Regarding the reasons for doubts, I think that an important aspect when choosing a book worth winning in our competition is always the value for the Polish reader (as the books are translated into Polish) and the subject matter. This novel may actually be a tribute to the father of the narrator (and perhaps even the author, since it is probably autobiographical), but I do not see any exceptional values ​​that she could convey to the Polish audience.

« HÔTEL WALDHEIM » FRANÇOIS VALLEJO

«Hôtel Waldheim» is a moral novel with political elements, written in the first-person narrative and embedded in the realities of today, as well as in the 70's of the twentieth century. The action is mainly in France and Switzerland.
One day, Jeff Valdera receives an anonymous postcard about enigmatic content, from Switzerland, where the hotel is located, in which he once stayed as a teenager with his aunt during the holiday season. He soon receives new postcards that allow him to locate and contact their sender. Intrigued by a person who seems to know a lot about him, he decides to make an appointment with her. It turns out that she is a woman, Frieda Steigl, daughter of Friedrich Steigl, a professor of German-speaking history who stayed at the Waldheim Hotel during the same period as Jeff. Frieda wants him to tell her about his father, but the man does not suspect that his memories are really an excuse to solve the mystery of disappearance, in which the unconscious 16-year-old was entangled. "Une ouverture d'esprit", to which Frieda urges him, reveals a bit of the political scene of the game, led by the hotel guests and the truth about the past. «S'il n'y a pas encore pire que l'ignorance. La connaissance peut-être? »

The main motive of this novel is memory. Memory in the context of memories of the past, memory of people, still alive and provocative search, inquiring truths; historical memory, which is an important background, refers to the period of the Cold War, the division of Germany into West Germany and the GDR; about the fugitives from this period who found help and shelter at the Waldheim Hotel and about Stasi agents whose task was to uncover them.
The inconspicuous Hotel Waldheim became the center of political games in which the owner was entangled, Johann Meili, his brother Dr. Christian Meili, Frau Finkel, a regular and passionate literature lover, Friedrich Steigl, father Frieda, Linka's marriage, and our main character.

Jeff is oblivious to the role he plays in the hotel. He becomes an intermediary, informer and even suspected of cooperation in hiding fugitives. He is a witness to conversations and events that in retrospect (and under the influence of Friedy) take on a whole new dimension. Suddenly, the innocent and seemingly insignificant memories of a teenager become a source of valuable information for Friedy, for whom the real world is history and events from the past.
Frieda is a very interesting figure indeed. Extremely intelligent and well-read, penetrating and uncompromising in her search, even obsessively seeking the truth about her father's fate - based on archives and documents, convinced of her reason and her imagination of what happened. Jeff's memoirs are juxtaposed with the confessed statements of the Stasi agents, the memory is reconstructed anew. «Memoire parallele, comme si une moitié de mon cerveau était remplacée par cette machine à souvenir totalitaire». We get to know the story through the eyes of Jeff, but already aware of those nuances that have escaped him before. This may cause some scoff when reading, how likely is it to remember with such precision the details from several decades ago? Is it possible to talk about the preparation of memories, about imagining something that could have been because someone told us that? Falsification of memories and facts is a topic that keeps coming back and is being analyzed on various occasions.

You can not fail to mention the theme of the game: about the political game, the game of appearances, metaphorical and literal game (in chess and it, practiced by hotel guests). The heroes analyze the movements of their opponents, adjust the strategy; Jeff becomes a pawn, whose double game is a mystery to everyone.

The Vallejo workshop is solid, both in terms of language and creation of the characters. Although the reading was quite pleasant, I do not consider it a worthy favorite. I did not find anything revealing in it, nothing that would be innovative and what would make me more emotional.

"LE MALHEUR DU BAS" Inès Bayard

Useful informations:
- a novel (in my opinion) of morality, set in contemporary times
- Narrative 3-seater, strongly focused on the main character and rarely going out, her world '
- The action of the novel is happening mainly in Paris

Outline of content:
The novel begins, from the end: on the first three pages, we learn that the mother poisoned her husband and son at dinner.

Time goes back and we meet a young woman- Marie, who seemingly has everything: a great job in a bank, a lawyer's husband, beautiful apartment, friends, etc. The idyll ends when one day after work, the boss proposes to drive her home. The man descends from the route, parks in the garage and violently violates the subordinate (I recommend reading the most sensitive readers on an empty stomach). Marie, shocked, does not tell anyone about the whole incident, the closest ones do not see any changes in her behavior, and if they see, they put it to work fatigue. Marie tries to recover and forget about the tragedy, but she does not know for long that she is pregnant. Intuitively, she feels that this is the child of the boss, and here begins the broadly understood "hatred": to herself, to her husband, to the child, to the world and everything that surrounds her. Without psychological help after the trauma that touched her, Marie falls into deeper and deeper depression: she neglects her duties, does not look after her son properly, does not go to work and is most likely not getting out of bed. To all this, my husband begins to cheat on her, and she feels more and more chaos in her life. In the end, an idea appears in her head, which the reader already knows from the first pages of the novel. The ending brings with it a certain spike twist (SPOILER ALERT): Marie's husband has asked a friend to test the child's DNA. When he falls dead, poisoned by his wife, he gets an SMS saying that this is his child.

My opinion:
The novel touches on an extremely important and painful problem that many women have already touched. The reader is a witness of what the lack of help and support for those closest to in such traumatic events leads to. The author shows very well the progressive depression and what the main character feels. Nevertheless, at certain moments the book is long and it is not that interesting. However, due to the fact that it raises an important topic and ends up in me really remarkable, I can say that I even liked it