This is the second novel by an Alsatian from Richwiller, Julia Mattera. She signs, still at Flammarion, the breaststroke syndrome. But we’re not really going to swim, there, we’re going to read a book! Former swimming champion, Oscar thought he was acting for the happiness of his family. All his energy was turned towards his success in order to protect them from want. But when his wife leaves him, tired of his absences, he lets himself sink, moving away from his son, his family and his roots.
It was counting without the determination of his mother, who decides to work out a strategy to bring him back to his native region and, above all, this will bring him out of his shell and his daily grind.
Who could have foreseen that by becoming a water aerobics teacher in a retirement home, Oscar would learn to be happy? A novel tribute to Alsace, to friendship, and to roots. An ideal text for the summer which manages to treat with lightness a current and necessary subject: our elders and their living conditions.
The large format of Le Syndrome de la Brasse coulée is priced at 18€50 at your favorite bookstore. His previous novel, “the farmer who spoke to carrots and stars”, is in competition for the Prix du Lys du Forum du Livre de Saint-Louis next weekend.
The novel on the publisher’s website Flammarion.
The Saint-Louis Book Forum site, from May 13 to 15.