A novella weighing in at just over 130 pages but the depth of emotion contained within it makes it a bigger book than the sum of its pages. Quality not quantity. With poetic and elegant prose this story is an exploration of trauma and dysfunction created between the generations. As the translator advises us in his opening note the French title refers to a poem by Paul Verlaine, the French Symbolist poet, and it was as if Verlaine were overlooking the whole story.
Told from the perspectives of three family members, Wolf, a seventeen year old boy, fragile, probably on the spectrum, his sister Paloma whose leaving of the family home ten years previously, was the slow catalyst for Wolf’s ‘joy ride’, and Phoenix, the mother, damaged and troubled, this story eloquently offers us a consideration of the emotional bruising created by lack of understanding, a paucity of affection and fractured relationships between parents and children. At the beginning of the tale Wolf is detained in prison - as the narrative develops we realise that the story is also about symbolic prisons, the ones that are created, or we create, for our own selves.
The subject matter is not uplifting to put it mildly but there is a underlying beauty rendered through the prose in spite of the tensions underpinning the story. It is not without redemption and the final chapter is a refined, exquisite piece of writing with subtle emotion and wisdom that serves as a salve for the reader after the events of the book. It is one of those stories that imprints itself upon your head and heart and stays with you long after you’ve finished it. Beautifully translated by Geoffrey Strachan nothing is lost in his treatment of the prose.
My thanks to Milly Reid and MacLehose Press for a gifted copy.
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