Paris, Lord’s Day,
Sunday, January 15, 2012,
This first novel, no longer than 150 pages, is short. And yet, like a good trickster, the author sweeps us along for more than half the story with his untimely “on”. “We wanted more.” “We wanted nothing, just this, just this.” “We stopped for a moment, time to breathe.” And that’s just the beginning… As a result, the imposing question of “Who’s speaking?” intrudes – right from the start – into the reading.
In the harsh, violent environment of a crazy family, as society always knows how to make them, a pack of three brothers try their hand at life. While the father beats the crap out of his wife and leads the children to believe that it’s the dentist who’s done her in, the mother – off-kilter at 360° and weak to the point of death – can easily forget to feed the flesh with her blood.
“In the midst of chaos, we watch these three kids, their silhouettes as yet ill-defined, bend to the irrational yet irrefutable demands of a disoriented family. Staying in orbit, constantly dealing with life, apprehending risk-taking to better try to circumvent it, taking on forced roles that are not supposed to be those of childhood… Growing up, in a way, a little diagonally.
A V-shaped life.
The polluting “we” is – after all – only the soprano voice of the youngest. An “I” who, despite having grown up in a sibling family, is the product of the same genetic make-up, seems to be the trio’s winning candidate, both in terms of intelligence and intimate experience of borders, and in terms of extreme sensitivity, which suggests playing double or nothing with existence.
She said you were so brilliant.
So brilliant!
And you know what else? She said you were capable of destroying yourself, too.
The way she talks about you,” Joel said, “you sound like a fucking crystal vase.
The first novel is rooted in the big crushing machine of autobiographical narratives, but there’s no need to wriggle, this one is meant to be a good vintage. Justin Torres, and we’ll even forgive him his first name (that’s saying a lot…), skilfully slaloms – ball in hand – between poetic sensibility and apocalyptic episodes. And we’re glad he does, because he avoids almost all the traps of the genre, which he could have foisted on us over and over again.
From a story nourished by a plural, and which only manages to grow under the pressure of this idea of brotherhood as guardian, is revealed the singular experience of a kid who smells different perfumes and pursues lights that only he knows how to see. Vie animale never lets up, throughout, and brilliantly strings together a reader swollen by the incredible intellectual vivacity of this Little Being from nothing.
Read on.
Elisa Palmer
Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)
