> Lignes de faille, de Nancy HUSTON (Actes Sud, 487 p.)
Se reporter au compte rendu de P. N.
In: (2007). Compte rendu de [Nouveautés]. Entre les lignes, 3 (2), p. 48… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/10578ac
Sol, Randall, Sadie et Christina ont six ans quand ils racontent leur vision d'événements ayant eu lieu en 2004, en 1982, en 1962 et en 1944. Quatre voix, en autant de chapitres, évoquent des événements politiques cruciaux qui ont marqué l’histoire contemporaine occidentale. En 2004, c’est la guerre d'Irak, vue par les yeux de Sol, petit Américain repu de jeux vidéo et d’Internet, ivre de sa toute-puissance, fier de son père qui soutient la présence américaine en terre irakienne. Et qui rassure son fils : « Mais je n’ai pas besoin de m'engager dans l’armée, parce que ma boîte participe déjà à l'effort de guerre. Ne t’en fais pas, Sol. Je suis dans le coup, crois-moi. Si tout le monde joue son rôle avec autant d'enthousiasme que moi, le terrorisme arabe n’en a plus pour longtemps. »
A travers les relations entre fils et père, puis entre celui-ci et ses propres mère et arrière-grand-mère, Nancy Huston développe une histoire bouleversante dans laquelle on réalise à quel point chaque famille survit et compose avec ses secrets et ses zones d’ombre. Huston remontant jusqu'en 1944, on heurte de plein fouet la Seconde Guerre mondiale et son cortège d'horreurs qui a fait de l'humain un barbare. La grande histoire est ici distillée dans le quotidien de chacun des personnages; impossible de ne pas être ému par la quête obsessive de Sadie. New-Yorkaise qui déménage en Israël avec son garçon de six ans et son mari écrivain pour retrouver les traces d'enfants soi-disant allemands enlevés à leurs familles. Les adultes sont dépeints avec autant de soin que les enfants dans les romans de Huston, attention qui fait ressentir au lecteur tout le poids des rêves et des névroses que les générations se lèguent l'une l'autre. Depuis toujours, la famille (la filiation, la maternité, la transmission de la mémoire) est au cœur des romans de Nancy Huston. Dans Lignes de faille, l’illustration est éclatante : la famille dont elle parle tant est aussi celle que nous formons tous sur cette planète. Actes Sud, 487 p. / Prix Femina 2006
—P. N.

> Huston, Nancy. Lignes de faille. Paris: Actes Sud, 2006. 487 p.
Se reporter au compte rendu de Kirsten HALLING
In: Dalhousie French Studies, Vol. 86, Littératures francophones: Mythes et exotismes à l'ère de la mondialisation (Spring 2009), pp. 167-168… ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HoH6VPajFLRb93SfEz3YbVsi1aUqaNTH/view?usp=shari...

This book definitely got better as I got into it; in fact, I almost put it down during the first chapter. A six year old with a mind like Sol's is very disturbing and not even realistic. However, as the stories of the father and grandmothers were told, I found myself hooked.

War is messy and creates messy situations, events and families. I have never read about the Germanization of stolen children under the Nazis. This provides a fascinating read to anyone interested in stories of WWII; however, I must agree with some of the reviewers who pointed out the lack of connection with the characters. I did immediately go back to the first and reread parts that took on much more significance after I knew the ending.

Perhaps this story also demonstrates the profound effect mothers have on their children even when they aren't a part of their lives. I found this book interesting, readable, and thought provoking. I just wish I would have liked these people a bit better, but maybe that's the point: each generation was doomed to carry the baggage accumulated by those that came before them. ( )

Ugh. So did not like. No six year old expresses themselves like any of the four narrators in this novel and the use of the congenital birthmark as a symbol of inherited behavior was offensive. ( )

Review: Fault Lines by Nancy Huston.

This book was a well written fascinating story. Nancy Huston wrote and narrated four generations by a six year olds point of view in each section written in a reverse order. Each six year old narrator relates their childhood story connecting the different version to the generations gone by. Sometimes confusing but amazingly Huston did make a connection throughout the different sections of the book.

Fault Lines is a powerful story revealing a period in history where the Nazi Lebensborn program of World War II was used. This program resulted in the abduction of more than 200,000 children from subjugated countries. The children were placed in German homes that had lost one of their own children due to the war. Four incidents center on four amazing children in one family. The four children’s names were Erra, Klarysa, GG, and Kristine.

The story starts with Sol who is a gifted, terrifying child whose mother believes he is destined for a better life because he has a birthmark like his dad, his grandmother, and his great-grandmother. The child narrator takes the reader from present day, 2004 California to 1980’s Hiafa, to 1960’s Toronto, to 1944’s Germany. As the story goes on the author slowly reveals the family secrets by hints in each narrator’s story and weaving the story together in a way to expose the mysteries of this family. While building an emotional story of the abducted children Huston’s prose is spare and skillful, placing the reader within each child’s world during times of stress, revelation and change.

The abducted children all shared the same secrets of their family and the mystery behind the birthmarks talked about within each section. Each generation was doomed to carry the baggage accumulated by those that came before them. The last part of this book regarding Germany during the war is another emotional eye-opener as many other World War II stories that sit along the shelves in many homes…..
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Wonderful, sad, profound, witty and everything you could ask for in a novel.