On his return from the Algerian war, a wealthy heir at odds with his father meets the woman of his dreams on the Marseille-Paris train.
In 1962, Eddie Poujol, 20, raised by his grandparents in Le Vigan, returns to Marseille after having fought in the Algerian War. Rather than going to the bedside of his wealthy, sick father, he jumps on the first train without a ticket. There he meets Agnès Cazyulis, who gives him the ticket of her fiancé who has just left her. Their night of love on the train to Paris will lead them to marriage.
Dreaming of being a singer like his friend Claude François, Eddie navigates with ease in the sordid world of bars, casinos and clandestine brothels, while Agnès longs to open her husband’s trunk while taking care of their little one. Only Maureen and Jeff, envious friends of the couple, seem to be lucid in this world tested by the Second World War, colonization and the Algerian War, where Eddie seeks to stun himself to forget his unhappy childhood.
In a casual tone in which irony and tenderness alternate, through colorful dialogues exchanged between sometimes abrasive characters and descriptions as succinct as they are picturesque, the Breton writer Yann Queffélec (winner of the 1985 Goncourt Prize for The Barbarian Weddinghis second novel) brings back to life the nights of Paris, at the dawn of the yéyé era. Patiently, with a sometimes disconcerting sense of ellipsis, the novelist unravels the threads of this painful family history where the promise of forgiveness is outlined.
The black jellyfish
Calmann Levy
290 pages