The novelist Brigitte Giraud, author ofA wolf for man (2017) this time publishes a very personal novel in which she traces the thread of events, or non-events that led to the accidental death of her companion twenty years ago. live fastpublished on August 24 by Flammarion editions, wins the Goncourt 2022 prize.
The story : Brigitte Giraud is about to sell her house. She has lived there with her son since the death of Claude, her companion, twenty years earlier, in a motorcycle accident. Claude did not have time to live there. The purchase of this old house in the heart of Lyon is part of the list of “ifs” that the narrator recites in an attempt to give meaning to this absurd death, expressing after having killed her this obsession which never left since the accident “whose cause has never been explained”.
The list of “ifs” goes on endlessly, as if all the events, from the closest to her to the furthest away, had a connection with the drama. She thus scrutinizes the moments which preceded this June 22, 1999 when her life changed. A missed phone call, an inappropriate meeting, her brother’s unexpected vacation, her grandfather’s suicide, Stephen King’s accident or the weather… She “rewind a hundred times”looks for links, coincidences, cause and effect relationships, in vain.
“There is nothing to understand, everyone plays their role. Everyone has their place in the city, in all legitimacy: the doctor, the notary, the teacher, the firefighter, the policeman, the librarian, the banker, the priest. It’s called a society. Everything is so well oiled. It works, it malfunctions, for better or for worse. E journalist, the employee of the funeral parlor, the writer. There is no if.”
Going back in time to find explanations for death, the novelist unfolds the little details that make up a life. A “trivial” life, made up of projects, love, little hassles, enthusiasm. A life that does not include for a second the possibility of a stop in mid-flight, following the unexpected runaway of a motorbike at start-up. A sudden stop without explanation, if not a combination of circumstances excavated to the point of mania by the novelist, who will not find herself appeased, ready to “surrender” only after having explored its smallest meanders.
Brigitte Giraud deploys the “if” in a systematic game of repetitions that speaks well of obsession, anger, guilt. This systematism nevertheless ends up making the reading of this intimate novel as oppressive as that of a thriller, even if between the “if” is drawn a portrait of love, that of the deceased, but also the contours of an era, of an environment, and of a certain way of life that could be described as fluffy when it is not hit by death.
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Live fast, by Brigitte Giraud (Flammarion, 208 p. €20)
Extract :
“When no disaster occurs, we move forward without looking back, we stare at the horizon line, straight ahead. When a tragedy arises, we turn back, we come back to haunt the place, we proceed to the reconstruction. We want to understand the origin of each gesture, each decision. We rewind a hundred times. We become the specialist in cause and effect. We track down, we dissect, we autopsy. We want to know everything about human nature, the intimate and collective springs that make what happens, happens. Sociologist, cop or writer, we no longer know, we are delirious, we want to understand how we become a cipher.” (live fast, p. 23)