It starts off pretty well. Clear style. Rhythm. And above all, a subject that intrigues: she is in her early twenties. He is going on his 72 years. They love each other with a forbidden love. She is “Claire”, a young law student.
He is François Mitterrand, President of the French Republic. For six years, they will have a relationship, unbeknownst to the media. A completely crazy story. It is the “last secret” of Mitterrand, which is not however close to a double life. How does he find the time and the strength to hang out with these young people who know nothing about life? To visit him, to take him on a trip, to invite him to a restaurant? This is the question we ask ourselves when reading this strange literary object, signed Solenn De Royer, journalist of the World. Fascinating story, although in the long run, we get bored.
This clandestine love is impossible for obvious reasons. Fifty years separate them, a world separates them. It all ends up going in circles. More disturbing: the author chose to reproduce scenes and recreate from scratch the dialogues, sometimes intimate, between the two lovebirds. This gives rise to sometimes embarrassing exchanges. It is noteworthy that a reporter reveals this astonishing story. The book was received in France as a nice addition to the Mitterrandian puzzle, a veritable sphinx of French politics.
Whether she turns it into a Harlequin novel is more debatable. The sauce – sweet – stretches. Moment of grace, all the same: one evening, Claire opens her old boxes at the request of the author. She takes out a stack of answering machine tapes, kept there since the president’s death in 1996. You can hear all the messages that the latter left her. The ultimate proof that their story was true and that Mitterrand, even old, even “overbooked”, was a professional lover.
The last secret
Solenn De Royer
Stifle