David Turgeon displays all his mastery in this (sort of) satire of the literary world.
It would be tempting to qualify Isoline’s novelnew book by David Turgeon, satire on the world of publishing, but the term satire would not describe with sufficient nuance the look rich in allusive formulas and half-smiles that he takes on the fascinating, and sometimes problematic, insularity of an environment too inclined to fuel its own legend, because it serves it well.
By knocking at the writer Paula Kahl’s house, Isoline, a self-effacing editorial assistant, obviously had no idea that she would find her in her bathtub and save her from death. This shocking combination of circumstances will suddenly tear him away from the ordinary of his daily life and even more so when, after Paula has managed to end her life, the promotion of his unpublished works will come back to him, a material in which it will sink until it is lost.
All the ingredients of the inimitable David Turgeon style shine again in this sixth novel, starting with the bewitching finesse of this polished language, although never pompous, the choice of the right, and sometimes rare, word, always contributing to tickle our intelligence.
The author of Simone at work (2016) also remains the master of the simple and anterior past, in whom these verb tenses do not weigh down the prose, but rather give it, ironically, an effervescent lightness. In other words: even his complicated sentences appear clear.
The skill tinged with humor with which he tackles questions specific to the era – such as that of inclusive writing – is also the mark of a writer knowing how to put his effects at the service of his values. In Isoline’s novelsubversion protects itself from facetiousness, formal games, artifice, and the feminism of its author, the posture of superiority. Even the last quarter of the book, into which the hot (and already somewhat worn-out) subject of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in creation interferes, fails to drag this book into banality.
But beyond this formal brilliance, it is the power of the obligations that the living have towards the dead that Turgeon reflects here, with a mixture of reverence for the importance of literature and healthy derision towards those for whom this power justifies all lies, all compromises.
The spiral into which Isoline will sink could appear laughable, even contemptible, but the author refrains from making fun of anyone, perhaps because he knows that the mythology of an all-powerful literature, acting according to one’s own wishes, is both what is most harmful and most irresistible.
Isoline’s novel
The Quartier
208 pages