Heartache

Axl Cendres

Tous les garçons et les filles – Françoise Hardy

Hometown Glory – Adele

Parc des Buttes Chaumont, Paris,

Sunday, April 10, 2011,

“Axl Cendres is not yet thirty, but she already has a singular talent. She has published three acclaimed novels in Sabarcane’s Exprim’ collection: Aimez-moi maintenant, Mes idées folles and, this autumn, Echecs et but. She lives in Paris.

Echecs et but par Axl Cendres

Les maux du coeur par Axl Cendres

The hero of the story lives “alone with (his) mother, rue de la Fontaine-au-Roi; where there was neither fountain nor king”. He is 15 years old. The age when keeping face – or not losing it – unfortunately rhymes all too often with lying. The age when, for all your classmates, you must have already smoked, already rolled, already tried to create your own roller coaster with your tongue in the mouth of (at least) one girl, and more if affinities… The age when, for your mother, when she finds a pellet of pot in your jeans while doing the laundry, you’re already the worst potential drug addict. And she’s already well aware of the list of specialized establishments to “treat your addiction”. It’s also the age when you inevitably fall in love with that girl from somewhere else, who offers you Kit Kat and Mars and reads you poems by Rimbaud, Verlaine, Baudelaire… The dirty age when you lie – and lie some more – in order not to displease or hurt the people around you.

A very simple book about the troubles and torments of a 15-year-old boy at the very dawn of his life. A book that also reminds us of the non-obviousness of that terribly ungrateful (and almost impossible) age when the famous girl from elsewhere may very well one day tell you – after you’ve traveled a good third of the map of France to reach her – that you’re just nobody. Nobody to her. A book that talks about everything we’d like to have mastered and know how to do to feel (more) confident and (much more) grown-up, and explains wonderfully why lying is still the best cover.

Elisa Palmer

Heartache / Axl Cendres
Ed. Sabarcane
59 pages / 5€ / 1st semester 2011

Cette publication est également disponible en : Français (French)