Laurine Roux

Laurine Roux won the Alexandre-Vialatte for this novel published in 2022. The prize is awarded for a french language author for the elegance of writing, a vivacity of thoughts and a pleasure for the reader. That may be the case, but I struggled a bit more than usual reading this book in french. It is a story of four generations of the family Aghulon told by Gabriel a surviving member of the family at the time of the covid pandemic. It is a story of a family touched by greatness throughout their span of living either from their own abilities or through the people they meet, or with whom they socialise. There are elements of magic realism, supplied mainly by the generations of philosophising cats who sometimes help the family in times of crisis.

The story starts with Barthélmy a young man interested in science who becomes a pupil of Louis Pasteur, and participates in the science of pasteurisation. His son Jacques horribly mutilated in the first world war uses this knowledge to make a fine wine from the families vineyard which becomes the toast of Paris. His sister Marguerite lives with their relations who own a restaurant in Paris; a beautiful and intelligent woman who with the help of her cat Socrates locates Jaques who has shut himself away in a flat, somewhere in Paris, because of his cruel injuries. Marguerite lives to the age of 107 and becomes the backbone of the family, in her youth while working in the restaurant she has her portrait sketched by Picasso and becomes associated through her art with Diaghilev. The family loses the restaurant after Marguerite's husband Audran, an anthropologist, is tricked by Stavisky the infamous swindler. Their daughter Rose becomes a famous classical pianist and the family retire to the family home in the South of France where Jaques is still making his famous wine to sit out the second word war.

The charm of the book is the way historical event brush or sometimes overwhelm this talented family. The elements of magical realism are not too intrusive and add to the enchantment of the story telling. I warmed to the book the more I read through and so 3.5 stars.… (mehr)