The Five O’clock Man
Publisher
:
V. Hamy
Parution date
:
2009
EAN
:
9782878582987
Number of pages
:
285
Description
A delicious journey into literature and painting, this unusual first novel seduces the reader with its intrigue and strong characters.
—Lire
How and when does a work of art start? And why is five in the evening such an important time for creation? Gilles Heuré invites the reader to join him—and a man who claims to be poet-philosopher Paul Valéry—on a series of walks through Paris. The clock strikes five . . . and the conversation turns to writers and painters and what inspires them.
Paul Béhaine, alone as usual, leaves the Bibliothèque Nationale on rue de Richelieu as it closes, just after five o’clock. He decides that for a change he will walk home, and he starts across the Pont des Arts. A man—a stranger in many ways—begins to talk to him in hushed tones. “I’ve been told that one can no longer begin a novel with ‘The marquise went out at five o’clock in the evening,’ ” says the stranger. The man goes on, explaining his theory that that time of the day is of significance in literature and the arts. Béhaine finds himself increasingly interested. Then the man tells him something that cannot be true—he claims to be Paul Valéry, poet and philosopher. Valéry died in 1945. . . . But Béhaine is so entranced by the stranger’s conversation that he can ignore this clear theft of identity.
The two meet regularly, at five o’clock, to wander the streets of Paris and discuss the five-o’clock factor in art and for such artists as Stendhal, Goya, Hemingway, and Brecht. Monsieur V, as Paul begins to refer to him, is widely knowledgeable and a brilliant and amusing conversationalist, which keeps Paul listening attentively. The day arrives when Monsieur V suggests that he has taught Paul everything he can—and then no longer appears for their walks. Paul, intent on finding him and learning his true identity, discovers his house and the bulk of his research on the five-o’clock theory. In an unexpected turn, he at last learns Monsieur V’s real name.
Author
Gilles Heuré : Gilles Heuré is a reporter for Télérama and the author of two books of nonfiction, Historien du sensible (Éditions la Decouverte, 2000) and L’insoumis Leon-Werth 1878–1955 (Éditions Viviane Hamy, 2006). L’homme de cinq heures is his first novel.
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