Posted yesterday at 7:00 a.m.
(Paris) Karine Tuil does not usually receive at home. She admits to being jealous of her private life and asks that we not give too many details about her apartment, located on the banks of the Seine in the heart of Paris.
If she agrees to do the interview at home, it’s because she likes Montreal, where she has family, and that, in the end, it was perhaps easier and more pleasant that way.
We meet her to talk about decisionsound 12and highly anticipated novel, after the monster success of human thingssold more than 360,000 copies and won the Interallié prize and the Goncourt des lycéens two years ago, before being adapted for the cinema by Yvan Attal.
Still too early to say if this new book will in turn become a best seller. But it explores, in any case, the same universe, that is to say that of justice, with all the fundamental questions that this implies.
Alma Revel is an anti-terrorism investigating judge who must decide the fate of a young man suspected of having joined the Islamic State group. Will she leave him behind bars or release him at the risk of him committing an attack? Is he repentant, as he claims, or is he still thinking of jihad? What consequences will Alma’s final “decision” have on the country’s security?
This is the dilemma facing the magistrate, who must also manage her marriage which is taking water with a has-been writer, while she maintains a secret relationship with the defendant’s lawyer.
desire to understand
As with most of her books, Karine Tuil wrote on this subject because she “needed to understand”.
Like many people of her generation, she was marked by the attacks of September 11, 2001, November 13, 2015 and March 2012 in Toulouse, which left her with “a great feeling of anguish”. These “death impulses” obsess him, questioning him about “the dysfunction of our society”. But unlike The invention of our lives (2013) where she spoke of the journey of a jihadist, she chose this time to focus on the work of anti-terrorism judges responsible for investigating the cases of the accused before the trials.
To complete the project, he had to enter the secret world of anti-terrorism. Over the course of a long, quasi-journalistic investigative work, Karine Tuil met investigators, lawyers and above all investigating judges who spoke to her about their work, their reality, their daily life, and the mechanics of the judiciary. She also attended important trials, which allowed her to better understand the complexity of human relationships in this specific context.
Inevitably, the fundamental questions ended up imposing themselves, and more particularly that of uncertainty. Because if the judges know how to decide, they are also beings of flesh and blood, who doubt, hesitate… and sometimes fear making the wrong decision, all the more so when the security of the country is at stake.
In the case of Alma Revel, the whole issue is whether Abdeljalil Kacim is recoverable despite his past, or whether he still poses a threat to society. Is he sincere? Does he practice concealment? Do we want to give it a chance? What will be the consequences of his release? Is the danger greater to keep him in prison, where he could find hatred?
By writing her “I” novel, Karine Tuil takes us inside the head of the protagonist and shares with us “her dilemmas, her conflicts, her anxieties”, related to the crucial choice she will have to make.
“In reality, what is a good decision? asks the writer. The one that is good for his conscience? For the society ? The profession of judge is certainly not a profession of certainties… Even if they have a body of evidence, expert reports, even if they carry out interrogations for years before there is a trial and their decision is informed by objective elements, there is often an element of doubt. »
A legal thriller
We will obviously not tell you what choice Alma Revel will make. In the interview, the writer contorts herself a few times so as not to reveal the end of the novel.
What can be said, however, is that the decision does not give only one point of view. Although dominated by Alma’s reflections, the story is punctuated by numerous interrogation scenes with the accused, which suggest a second reading angle.
Delivered in the form of a dialogue, these almost cinematographic vignettes make it possible to reconstruct Kacim’s journey and to better understand the uncertainties of the examining magistrate… which at the same time become ours.
All of this contributes to the pace of the novel, which at times reads like a forensic thriller. Karine Tuil has the gift of efficiency. And we guess at her an almost indecent facility for writing.
” Is that so ? You think ? she said, surprised.
On this point, the author wishes to correct. decision is, on the contrary, the result of long months of suffering.
This apparent fluidity comes at a heavy price. I often say that I left this book shattered.
Karine Tuil
“The subject, already. You don’t spend months in contact with darkness, violence, barbarism and death without being yourself, after a while, morally affected. In addition, you should know that I wrote a good part of the book during the period when we were confined and it was a very difficult experience. »
This explains why the book also contains moments of very strong vitality, with this amorous passion that Alma experiences with a defense lawyer, a sort of luminous counterpoint to the tension that dominates the story.
“Finally, it was my way of opposing the sexual drive, the love drive and the life drive to the death drive”, underlines the writer.
In this specific case, the decision seems to have imposed itself…
decision
Karine Tuil
Gallimard
296 pages