Contemporary fiction

The street where it happened

For once in a while, prompted by a recent article in the NYRB, I have read a bit of contemporary fiction. One of those smart yellow paperbacks from nrf Gallimard by one Leïla Slimani called 'Chanson Douce'. A big hit in France in 2016 and getting the Prix Goncourt in the same year. A prize which is a big deal in France and which I have found a reasonably reliable source of fiction. See for example reference 3.

This one the story of a young professional couple living in a small flat in Paris (in a real street, I am pleased to say, snapped above from gmaps) with two young children who decide to get a nanny. A nanny who lives in mean circumstances far out in the south eastern suburbs and who gradually works her way into their lives. With a tragic ending.

An entirely readable book, despite what might be thought of as its ladies' subject matter. An upstairs downstairs story, where downstairs is the nannies - often recent immigrants, often Muslims - and their world. We know the ending from the beginning, but there is still a well paced, growing sense of tragedy about it all. Of disaster in the air. With the only unsatisfactory part being the very end. The bubble bursts and we are left hanging in the air. Things are not properly tidied up.

The author, a youngish lady with some Moroccan background, is clearly a very smart cookie and is clearly very big on the French literary scene. Bing turns up lots of stuff: Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia the works.

PS 1: I was amused to read at reference 3 of the French penchant for sanguinary stuff with knives - this being exactly how this story ends.

PS 2: I could not find the dotted i (ï) in the usually reliable Microsoft Character Map and was reduced to lifting one from Wikipedia. I thought at first that it was perhaps not a letter which appears in regular, US and western European names - but further investigation revealed that I had missed it because on my laptop screen it showed as the barred i (ῑ). There all along. And to think that my spectacles are nearly new. Perhaps Microsoft could provide a feature whereby all the versions of a nominated letter get listed in one place, rather than being scattered all over.

PS 3: why rue d'Hauteville? Because it is in or leads to what was the higher town, above the river? It does run north to south, a bit north of the river. Outside the city walls? Do they get book tourists there, in the way of the sets for popular television programmes and successful films? Not to mention the people who holiday in Dublin for Joyce or in Liège for Simenon. Something which, in happier days, I might have indulged in myself...

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%AFla_Slimani.

Reference 2: https://www.academiegoncourt.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/11/logre.html.