“Often, at night, the old writer dreams of his death. Curiously, he rarely feels the slightest anxiety,” writes Gilles Archambault in his most recent collection of short stories, Living on low heat. Death is there, lurking, and life grows impatient under the incisive, nostalgic and teasing pen of the writer. In this collection of 32 short stories, we initially have the impression that the characters are slipping through our fingers. We half-open windows that are closed too quickly, just allowing us to cast a voyeuristic eye on the sweet bitterness of old age, the banality of everyday life or the fleeting shocks that pass through the protagonists. However, the news multiplies and, in the accumulation, rather than dizziness, we experience deep tenderness. All these characters then come together into a living portrait. We didn’t open windows: we knocked down a wall. Behind this wall, a gentle man, a little rusty from a long life, rather severe with himself, willingly lends himself to the ordinary by offering his generous words to others.
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