Caroline Sers has lived in the Gers for ten years. She was born in Tulle, in Corrèze. In 2004, she won the First Novel Prize for “Tombent les avions”. In “The following days” the author leads us to ask ourselves the question: how to react in the face of a general power cut that affects the whole area and that no one can repair?
“The sudden feeling of breaking out of his routine, of being forced by external events not to carry out the usual tasks but to have to invent new ones fills him with a kind of urgent joy, tinged with anguish.” In the middle of winter, in a village café, all the lights go out. Like those of the town, the canton, the department… It’s a giant blackout, the origin of which is unknown. It’s cold, the water may no longer be safe to drink, prowlers are taking advantage of the darkness, the telephones are out of order. The only news is the shared rumours.
Pierre, an anxious neo-rural, tries to organize himself with his friends. They need to find forgotten gestures and invent new social links, far from virtual networks. In this situation where all their landmarks have been shattered, they will realize that they had settled into a way of life to which they did not fully adhere. Every day is now an opportunity to change…
A village in the Dordogne
This plot, Caroline Sers chose to imagine it in the Dordogne. It could very well be elsewhere, explains the author. “I wanted to place it in a place where everyone could recognize themselves. I live in the Gers, I have ties to Corrèze, I chose to place it between the two. But it could be in any what a rural village in France,” she explains. Caroline Sers mixed images of several villages she visited.
The departure of this writing is collapsology: it is a current of thought which envisages a global and systemic collapse of civilization. Caroline Sers is not at all close to this theory but she was intrigued by these thoughts and wanted to dig into the subject.
Meeting with Caroline Sers in the Reading Corner of France Bleu Périgord:
– Calmann-Levy