French politics, Russian espionage… It’s hard not to think about the burning news when reading the delirious new novel by Louis-Bernard Robitaille.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
An enigmatic president, implausible political decisions, Russian spies, the shadow of Putin in the background…
By publishing Double, Louis Bernard Robitaille probably did not imagine echoing – even remotely – the immediate news. But with the ongoing war in Ukraine and the presidential election looming in France, her new novel seems oddly very timely.
In this story of political fiction, nothing is going right at the Élysée. The president, Marc-Édouard Crillon, is unrecognizable. Stop talking to close associates. Isolates himself. And makes political decisions that are beyond comprehension.
His entourage does not understand anything. But the reader, he learns very quickly that the French head of state is in reality the fruit of a clever substitution orchestrated by the Russian secret services, in order to put Paris in the pocket of Moscow.
“What is suggested here in a fanciful way, that Putin’s Russia remains a current public danger”, explains the one who was for 35 years correspondent of The Press in Paris, and who now leads a happy life as a writer in the French capital.
This is the only concession that the author wants to make to the news. By his own admission, Double is above all a “totally implausible” story, a “fantasy” whose plot, completely delirious, must above all be seen as a “little settling of scores” with French politics.
Talk
Half a century after his arrival in France, the native Montrealer admits that the political circus “amuses” him more and more. But he doesn’t really laugh when asked to comment on the current presidential campaign.
Apart from Emmanuel Macron, whose victory is practically certain, no current candidate finds favor in his eyes, if not the communist Fabien Roussel, whom he describes as “sympathetic”, without much conviction for the rest.
Until 1985, I believed that French politics was serious, when it really is nonsense. The problem is that France is getting into debt and all the candidates are making unreasonable promises. I don’t think it’s so demagogic in the Scandinavian countries, in Germany or in the Netherlands.
Louis Bernard Robitaille
According to him, the only interest of this presidential campaign will be to see how the political landscape will be recomposed after the re-election of Emmanuel Macron.
“Even if we know the result for sure, the sequence of events is very enigmatic. Will the Socialist Party disappear? Who will win the duel between Zemmour and Le Pen? What will remain of the traditional right? Everyone is preparing for the next time. That’s the point…”
A wink
With all this, we almost forgot to talk about literature. And of this unclassifiable Doublewhich sits at the crossroads of spy novel, political thriller and eighth-degree satire.
Louis-Bernard Robitaille does not hide it: Double is a nod to the man in the iron mask, a mythical character in the history of France, whose legend was magnified by Alexandre Dumas in The Viscount of Bragelonne.
This homage to Dumas is perfectly assumed by Robitaille: the French writer is one of the first, if not the very first author to have given him a taste for writing and romance.
“Not very original,” he minimizes. This is the case for many people in France. »
Nevertheless. We feel a strong emotional bond here. Among the rare personal effects that followed Robitaille from Montreal to Paris, when he finally moved in 1972, is an old edition of the novel twenty years later (hyphen between The three Musketeers and The Viscount of Bragelonne) which occupies a special place in its otherwise well-stocked library.
“I wrote the date inside, I was 13… It’s definitely my oldest book. It’s amazing that he survived,” he said, rummaging through his memories.
It will be found to say that Double is too unrealistic, too delusional. But that was the objective of this “exercise in style”, which, according to the author, represents a “step aside” in his literary career, which includes around fifteen works and whose greatest success remains And God created the Frencha biting portrait of French society published in 1994.
On our side, we see the potential for a TV series for this preposterous story, whose open end calls for a second season, or even a third… And what about a France controlled by Vladimir Putin?
We laugh (a little) just thinking about it. France is “an ungovernable country”, specifies the former journalist.
The Russian dictator would probably have his hands full…
Double
Louis Bernard Robitaille
Sydney Laurent Editions
330 pages