The prix Goncourt was awarded Thursday to the author Leïla Slimani for the novel “sweet Song” (Gallimard).
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The prix Goncourt was awarded to sweet Song of Leïla Slimani (Gallimard). This second novel has been nominated in the first round by the jury of the Goncourt, by six votes out of ten. Were also in the running The other that we loved by Catherine Cusset (Gallimard), Small Country Gaël Faye (Grasset), and Cannibal, Régis Jauffret (Threshold). A kind of logic to this list of 2016 who had seen, as noted on Twitter, the president of the jury, Bernard Pivot, the system ” galligrasseuil “ to reconstitute itself. With two being appointed on the four, Gallimard had mathematically a chance of winning. The house, which has always provided the largest contingent of winners from the price-the king of the French edition, had already recently won in 2006, 2009 and 2011.
In the wake and in the same place (the restaurant Drouant in Paris), the prix Renaudot was awarded to Babylon, by Yasmina Reza (Flammarion).
Read our critique of “Babylon” : Yasmina Reza, inspector festive
Story of family and poetic horror
With sweet Song, the jury has chosen to shine a little more light on a novel already very well received by the critics and the public, who has placed this week on the 10e place in sales of the literary network of booksellers Datalib. Leïla Slimani, just 35 years old, a journalist passed by the khâgne and Sciences Po, had already been widely noted in the past year for In the garden of the ogre (Gallimard), which featured a middle-class nymphomaniac. The book should soon become a movie. In telling the story of the excessive of a nanny who kills the children of a couple of petits-bourgeois, the writer-a kind of combination of the qualities of two other novels that were in the running this year : the story of the family but of socio-political interest of Gaël Faye, and the poetic horror of Régis Jauffret.
from a story, a double infanticide in the beautiful neighborhoods of New York city in 2012, Chanson soft grabs the reader with surprising power that is as much to the mastery of his narrative, that his writing is dry, clinical, precise. From the outcome (” The baby is dead “), the author goes back in time and explore the cracks of Louise, a nanny apparently perfect disarray grows throughout the story, nurtured by a sense of powerlessness and resentment against life.
Read our critique of “sweet Song” : The day when the nanny killed the children
She was hired by Myriam, a young employee of the parisian mother of two children, little attracted by the ” happiness, simple, mute, prison ” of the housewife, who was looking, with her husband, Paul, of the rare pearl. Louise exceeded their expectations because, in addition to taking care of small, she materne also the parents, sewing, tidying up, cooking, tirelessly : ” Louise of this apartment to draft a perfect bourgeois interior. “
The ambiguity of feelings examined
The nanny becomes necessary, installs the ” nest “ in the apartment and in the couple’s life : ” It is Vishnu deity, nourishing, jealous and protective. She is the she-wolf to the udder of which they come to drink, the infallible source of their family happiness. “ Certainly, some quirks of Louise surprised or worried : mood swings, disappearance of several days without notice, but the couple, who are not comfortable with the hierarchical relationship, finds him an apology : ” We humiliated. “ And then ” life overflowing “ to go to fulfill, tasks to accomplish, then Paul and Miriam turn a blind eye. Little by little, the link of subordination is reversed and the young woman sure of her lower their eyes in front of the nanny tinny.
Leïla Slimani revealed with subtlety the ambiguity of feelings, and this explosive cocktail of hatred, of desire and of affection that unites the nanny to his bosses. Beyond the extraordinary character of the story, she listens to the contemporary society in its contradictions. How to respond to this double injunction impossible to hold : work a lot and raise his children ? How to reconcile his conscience with the relationship of domination inherent in the employer-employee relationship ? the ” Not undocumented, it is okay ? For the maid or the painter, it doesn’t bother me. It should be well they are working, but to keep small, it is too dangerous. “ Behind the tolerance displayed, just a bow, a politeness that sounds wrong, for that is flush with the disregard of class, and that Louise, who was believed to be part of the family, to be returned to its condition of an employee. The success of her bosses eventually to him seem to be an obstacle to his ow n.
a narrative intelligence and social without fault, sweet Song is part of the lineage cruel of these stories – of the Good, of Jean Genet (1947) to Ceremony, by Claude Chabrol (1995) – inspired by the case of the sisters Papin, two maids who murdered their patronesses in 1933 : the tension that springs from every page y heats up to white’s analysis of the bourgeoisie as the eruption of a violence drive finished off by dynamite.
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