Translated into some twenty languages, Virginie Grimaldi is one of the most widely read novelists in France, alongside big names like Guillaume Musso, Joël Dicker, Mélissa Da Costa and Marc Levy. Her unpretentious novels, always funny and sincere, have been ideal reading for several years when looking for lighter books to entertain yourself on a beautiful summer day.
This brand new title – the 10e for adults (since she also writes for children) – revolves around two characters. Elsa, a separated mother of a 15-year-old boy, works as a counselor in a funeral home. When she herself loses her father, she is unable to grieve and ends up going to counseling.
It is in her psychiatrist’s waiting room that she meets Vincent, who always arrives too early for his appointments because he has to take the train from Bordeaux to get to this small provincial office. Vincent is a successful novelist, also separated father of two daughters, who ruins all his relationships. He believes he has everything to be happy, but he feels empty and bad about himself.
We are far from the kind of stories here where it is love at first sight between the two characters who love each other from the first sight and who end up living happily for the rest of their lives. Their first exchanges are tense, as neither is ready to invest emotionally – even for a simple conversation with a stranger. It will even take time for anything to happen in the story, which explains the fact that we move quite slowly in the first half of the novel.
If we did not experience as many emotions while reading this book as in the author’s previous one, A beautiful life, published last year (which told the story of the moving relationship between two sisters and their love for their grandmother), we do not shy away from our pleasure in this one since we happily enjoy the hilarious exchanges between the characters . Their thoughts, when they confide in their psychiatrist about their anxieties, their insecurities and their guilt, are also right, since Virginie Grimaldi succeeds in putting the right words to quite complex feelings. However, we will be careful not to judge the extent of Elsa’s mourning, which seems at times to take on disproportionate proportions. Despite everything, the fact remains that Virginie Grimaldi does not write romantic novels. And it is surely because she knows how to construct sentimental intrigues with a certain depth that she has been so successful since her beginnings.
Bigger than the sky
Editorial
334 pages