Clara reads Proust is a book that makes you smile, that makes you want to dive into the writings of Proust, inevitably, but also into all those great works where it is good to escape and which have the power to change a life. We caught up with Stéphane Carlier in France to discuss his latest novel.
Clara’s life wasn’t much hectic until a client walked into the hair salon where she works and left a book there. If it weren’t for this artist’s aura, both mysterious and fascinating, which surrounded the man, perhaps she would never have put this novel aside. In Search of Lost Time.
On a dreary Sunday in March, the young hairdresser lets herself be sucked into the world of Marcel Proust… and will not come out the same.
“We needed a great book, a great author. An immense book… a masterpiece of world literature”, considers Stéphane Carlier, who immersed himself in the seven volumes of The research to write this novel. “And maybe that’s why I made this book,” he adds. Maybe deep down, I wanted to rediscover the world of Proust, which seemed to me completely different from what I had read when I was 21. »
He admits it’s hard to read The research and understand everything at this age. It takes a certain maturity, in a way, to recognize what he calls the genius and the magic of Proust. “The shock wave that is always there when you close the book… Really, we no longer see reality as we saw it before reading it. »
In his opinion, Clara is one of those people who follow an already marked path when they are predestined for something else. The more she progresses in her reading, the more she realizes that “the little world of Cindy Coiffure”, just like her companion for whom she no longer feels any desire, is no longer enough for her.
“It’s the story of people who are not in their lives. This book reveals her to herself,” says the French writer.
Life throws us somewhere, we think it’s a permanent place because here we are, we don’t want to make the effort, we don’t have the curiosity, it’s much more comfortable to stay in the place than the destiny assigned us rather than looking elsewhere… And I’m sure there are a lot of people who would be much happier in a slightly different life.
Stephane Carlier
Books, “better than life”?
As she reads and immerses herself in Proust’s universe, Clara ends up believing that “books could be better than life”, writes Stéphane Carlier. “A sentence à la Truffaut”, notes the man who calls himself a great admirer of the French director.
And it is from this moment that the click occurs. Luckily, the young hairdresser will meet another fervent reader of Proust who also did not fit “in any box” and who says she was saved by her writings because she no longer felt alone after reading it. .
Stéphane Carlier also points out that in his next novel, a “polar-comedy” entitled Life is not a novel by Susan Cooper (due out next fall), he writes that his definition of hell is “a world without literature where books would not have been invented.” “You can’t find in TikTok or in video games what you find in books. »
He himself recently immersed himself with delight in rereading the books of Christian Bobin, who died at the end of November – “and it feels really good”.
Books that do good, that said, is his “hobby” as a writer, he adds. “I would like to write more serious books, but I’m so happy to write comedy. »
Clara reads Proust
Stephane Carlier
Gallimard
192 pages