After dragging us into the snowy Vercors massif last year with a chilling tale, Niko Tackian now points the compass towards a remote and deceptively heavenly island. There, fail those who have entrusted a mysterious company with the task of erasing all traces of their current life in order to restart another.
Posted yesterday at 9:30 a.m.
Just swallow the black pill (hello Matrix) and splash, we wake up under the coconut trees of an almost deserted village. Yohan, a writer in distress, thus chooses to start from scratch, finding himself decked out with a new name and a role to play, that of “detective”. But the providential island quickly turns out to be pestilential, with its unfriendly inhabitants, the absence of exit routes and the feeling of being constantly watched. Above all, death hangs over every trail.
Just like the protagonist, we burn to unmask the tenants of this prison island and their dark designs, this questioning leading to the last chapter, served by a rather digestible writing. But the reader will find (like the protagonist, again) some obstacles in the quest for truth, such as characters playing with the stereotype, struggling to stand out, but also airs of deja-vu/déjà-lu. Breathe explicitly refers to notorious works (Moby-Dick, The island of Doctor Moreau), and others more confidential, at least in French-speaking culture (Felsenburg Island). We discern the author’s fascination for the island setting and its symbolic significance, but the omnipresent specters of Shutter Island and of Squid Game give us the impression of walking in footprints already formed in the sand.
Breathe
Niko Tackian
Calmann Levy
300 pages