In a small bourgeois village in Haute-Savoie, overlooking the magnificence of Lake Annecy, where nothing can happen, where everything seems in perfect balance, Fanny, an attractive young woman, known and desired by everyone, is found dead, drowned on the banks of the lake. An investigation opens which allows us to lift the veil on the faults which weaken this community. With Nothing ever happens herejust published by Flammarion, Olivier Adam explores more broadly the problems of social inequalities, violence and what goes unsaid.
It was first of all the desire to write a sort of Shakespearean drama that led the author of Under the roses to write this investigative novel. Then, a little without knowing it, carried by his characters, in particular by Antoine, fragile, eternal adolescent who wakes up from a drunken night and learns of the death of this woman with whom he is in love, the Parisian author came to talk about femicide. “I started the book with this evening where the characters meet in this bar and, probably because we are in the middle of #MeTooin full questioning around the liberation of speech […] I realized that I was writing about femicide. » But he had to, as a man, as a novelist, he explains on the other end of the receiver, go further than using the violent death of a woman to write a good story. . “Necessarily, it appeared to me right away, once I had this beginning […] having to look seriously and question myself about sexist and sexual violence, male violence, domination, patriarchal society. Very quickly, the focus was placed on a family that is ultra-patriarchal, like a laboratory for society as a whole. »
Thus, in turn, in a series of reflections, each of the characters, locked in this enclosed place enclosed between the mountains, speaks and questions themselves about the event, recounts what they know, or at least what he really wants to say. And this way of doing things, Adam explains, joins the fundamental question which brings us back to the movement #MeToo. “The question of “me too”, it’s a question of freeing speech. When do we get to speak and when are we finally heard? When does society agree to hear what we say? So, from the outset I found it necessary to have, as in an investigation, lots of people who are heard in the judicial sense. Afterwards, knowing if they really speak, if they say what they know and if we really hear what they say, that’s another question that the novel tries to ask.” Choral book, therefore, in which all the characters act as witnesses and where all the men are potentially suspects. “Because it is feminicide, it is necessarily a man who committed it. 90% of feminicides are committed by relatives. […] A jilted lover, ex, husband, brother, cousin, employer, employee. So all men are almost suspects in such a small place,” says Adam.
Under the varnish
The title is therefore a reflection of these unsaid words, of this desire to throw smoke and mirrors. Nothing ever happens here is built on a game of opposition and contradictions between the rich owners and the workers without whom nothing happens, between tourism and the void created in slow periods, between violence and gentleness. A true false friend, the title is a way of saying, explains the author, “with us, move around, there is nothing to see. Nothing can happen here. Whereas, of course, these places are not safe from anything.” Places where everything seems in balance, but where also all the fractures and all the violence in society nestle. “We are in a period where social contrasts, contrasts of ideas, positioning, feelings or resentment towards the times, France, Europe, etc., are very, very marked and I think that the book also reflects this heartbreak, this fragmentation and these very great contrasts which define our country at the moment,” explains Olivier Adam.
This is why the story goes beyond the plot and the subject, as is often the case, underlines the author, in certain black novels. There is this drama, this trauma that the villagers have to face, but everyone is also absorbed by their own life, their problems, their contradictions, their emotions. Thus, the complexity of the characters strengthens the intrigue, pushes further the reflection on the failings of society, on human flaws, on violence, which is a rule for the author. For him, a character begins to exist when he is a little contradictory. “That’s also why I like people to be like life, situations to be like life. That, in the same movement, we are confronted with the best and the worst, with laughter and tears, with gentleness and violence. This is what I always try to bring together in the same scene or in the same chapter and in the interiority of each of the characters. »
The author delivers a finely crafted investigative novel in which all the characters are linked, directly or indirectly, to this drama which shakes them and which sheds light on violence against women. Convinced that the discourse must continue in society, that it is beneficial to denounce, to talk about these tragedies, Olivier Adam emphasizes that it is also essential that it is not an exclusively feminine fight because it concerns men and women. women. Surprised, moreover, by the men who complain about the movement #MeToo, he believes in masculine solidarity and launches an invitation to roll up our sleeves, to question ourselves, to question ourselves and go into battle alongside women “to imagine peaceful, egalitarian, respectful relationships”. Thus, “love, sensuality, seduction, all of that will benefit,” he concludes.