My Coronation
Publisher
:
Actes Sud
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782742788033
Number of pages
:
107
Description
***Rights sold to Germany***
***Winner of the Grand Prix du Roman de la Société des Gens de Lettres 2010***
***Winner of the Prix Lilas***
You have to be careful when you call a book a masterpiece, but there is definitely evidence of that in this first novel.
—Le Monde des Livres
Gilbert Kaplan, a pensive, solitary man, was once a renowned physicist. Now, long retired, his loneliness is kept at bay by the presence of his loyal, elderly, and ineffective housekeeper, Madame Ambrunaz. Suddenly his untidy living room is invaded by journalists and admirers wanting to talk about a scientific discovery he made so long ago that he has forgotten about it.
After the crowd leaves, Madame Ambrunaz prepares a plate of her special lentils for him and encourages him to feel excited about his newfound fame. But how can he? His gentle routine and comfortably transparent existence have been disrupted.
As he awaits the day of his award ceremony, first with indifference then with increasing annoyance, he ponders, often with a good dose of sarcasm, the process of growing old. He considers his life and the people in it with perplexity. He thinks about his deceased wife, whom he wished he could have loved, and his brother in his hideaway in the country. Then there are his sisters, one obsessed with tidiness and the other, the nicer one, who ran off to marry a bishop. He thinks about his former colleagues with whom he spent many hours making wild scientific speculations in the cold laboratory.
He is jolted into reality by his leather-clad son, who arrives unexpectedly and takes him off to buy him a suit for the ceremony. When the big day finally arrives, Madame Ambrunaz is to drive him to the award ceremony—but will he go? Will he be able to break away from comfortable obscurity?
Author
Véronique Bizot : Véronique Bizot is the author of two collections of short stories, Les Sangliers (Stock, 2005) and Les Jardiniers (Actes Sud, 2008). Mon couronnement is her first novel.
|