In August 2021 appears Blizzarda first novel. A manuscript sent by post and a phenomenon is born, a critical and bookstore success, followed by a string of literary prizes. Its author Marie Vingtras is discovered and becomes a writer. She returns for this literary rentrée with The Fierce Souls at L’Olivier, a story that dissects the worst thoughts of men and women trapped in a murder that will be the unveiling of all courage or all cowardice. A murder, the search for the killer and the precarious balance of the city collapses. The culprit may not be the one that everything denounces… In bookstores on August 19, 2024.
The story: In the small town of Mercy, somewhere in an American state, Leo, a young teenager, is found murdered. Nothing violent ever happens in Mercy, but this tranquility hides arrangements with the past. The sheriff, Lauren Hobler, is distraught in the face of this murder. It is spring, the climate is mild, life is good here and nothing should have upset the town’s inhabitants. Who is Leo’s killer? In four seasons and four characters, the reader sets off on an investigation, in the streets, behind the facades of clean houses, at the high school between popular and shy girls, at the home of a former successful writer forcibly exiled and in the depths of the souls of these American families who seem to have never had bad thoughts.
The Fierce Souls announces itself as a thriller in the America of clichés. A teenage murder in a small town without history. An investigator who doubts and is frightened by the truth, and a city that watches behind its windows the dead ends of the neighbors. But Marie Vingtras thwarts these famous clichés with cunning, she expels, by a clever construction, all the attributes of the thriller. The Fierce Souls is a polyphonic novel with four voices for as many characters.
Four chapters for four seasons and their weather. Four characters and their torments. Each with their own style, each with their own despair. Chapter one, the light of spring illuminates the sheriff’s doubts. Chapter two, the heat of summer crushes the former successful writer pursued by his guilt. Chapter three, it’s autumn, Leo’s former best friend reveals family secrets. Finally, chapter four, it will be the dark winter of the victim’s father and his disarray. The trick is played out as in four scenarios of the same story, with the changing lights of the landscape.
Four chapters and four styles. Like the weather of the seasons, the writing varies according to the characters. It becomes thriller for the investigator, literary for the writer, adolescent for the young friend and deep and dull for the father who lost his daughter. Marie Vingtras thus succeeds in keeping the reader in suspense, eager to solve the enigma, but immersed in the tribulations of each character.
Far from all the hustle and bustle, Mercy, a town without history, can only hide disturbing tendencies. The town breathes happiness, but as the sheriff dreams during her travels, “To the south, it was all fields and forests. (…) You would have thought there were no human beings for miles around. That was probably what people were looking for here, to live out of sight, but I was no longer entirely sure that it was healthy.”
Marie Vingtras first and foremost paints the portrait of a city, a town of 3,974 inhabitants before Leo’s death. The remaining 3,973 tense up, this death will upset their comfort. And when the sheriff drives down the small avenues, it is slow tracking shots that draw the spirit of the city, anxiety lurks. And this sentence by one of the characters, exiled from an intellectual New York and who tries to attract young people to the shelves of his library: “What was this city whose inhabitants hated literature so much?
But her investigation is stalling, she is a lesbian and lives with a woman who was hurt by her violent ex-husband. The view of men in the American West has not changed. For them, this sheriff, Lauren Hobler, is a casting error and her inability to solve the murder is a sign of female incompetence. The law must be masculine and virile. It could be a cliché from the Wild West of yesteryear, but under the author’s pen, the reader easily recognizes the America that Trump brings together from meeting to Republican meeting.
“Women who walk along the walls, whose movements are neither broad nor smooth, because they must not wake the beast that sleeps beside them.” The violence is dull, impalpable, hidden behind life’s failures, sneaky jealousies. Little by little, Mercy’s paradise cracks and through the cracks, the reader sees with horror the truth of each one.That’s not really how it happens and if they would take the trouble to look around them, they would see that misfortune is like water that seeps into my framework, it slips into all the free spaces and when the pressure is too great, everything ends up giving way.”
Marie Vingtras, in her first novel, did not hide her taste for American cinema. This time again, we think of the Coen brothers, and Fargo, for their acidity when discovering the body, between clumsiness and terror in front of the corpse. Sometimes, the imagery of True Detective for its female investigators who are looked at with a dirty eye by the local men emerges. There is a touch of Samuel Fuller in the violence of the prison where Benjamin, the ideal culprit, is staying. Leo and Emmy’s high school years are more like a Gus Van Sant film than the acidulous series Glee.
Journey to America, and universal immersion in the meanders and hidden face of human darkness, The Fierce Souls are perfect for a literary rentrée, for a year of American presidential elections and for doubting the good faith of one’s neighbors, friends or relatives.
:quality(50)/2024/08/17/154933-couverture-hres-0-1-66c09992c0cf8247302380.jpg)
“The Fierce Souls” by Marie Vingtras (Éditions de l’Olivier, 267 pages, 21.50 euros)
Extract :
“I didn’t see it coming. Nothing in the air had changed, there had been no warning signs, no clues. One less life does not derail the course of the world. At that moment, all I was wondering was where I could take Janis for a few days to take her mind off things, and all I could think about was fishing, which she wasn’t going to like. To be honest, I never really know what would satisfy her. When I dare to ask her the question, she answers me you know it well and what I know is that solving this problem is not within my capabilities, so I lie to him and tell him that we will find a solution. If cowardice is a masculine fault, God has really gone astray with me. I was outside, enjoying the sunshine that my windowless office was depriving me of, my eyes closed just enough to let in a ray of light and I tried to breathe deeply. : inhale by inflating the belly as much as possible, then exhale as slowly as possible, letting out a her monotonous like the hiss of a snake. The anger was supposed to go away and if Janis believed that, I was fine with that too. I let the sun warm me gently, I felt almost good. It was 3 p.m., it was April 26th. 2017. The date will remain etched in my memory, unless that it is not chased away by another even worse date. With mankind, you can never be sure of anything.”