“Surf Day”, by Maylis de Kerangal, Verticales, 256 p., €21, digital €15.
The ideal thing, we told ourselves before meeting Maylis de Kerangal, would be to meet her in Le Havre. We would walk with her through the streets of the port city that she makes a fully-fledged character in her new novel, surf day. All your previous books had required real fieldwork and precise documentary research. You would no doubt like to show us how places have nourished your writing.
The disappointment of not being able to reconcile schedules to carry out this project is quickly forgotten when we finally meet her in a Parisian café. And that, leaning on the image of the horizon of Le Havre that adorns the cover of the work, the writer points out that we do not immediately know if it is “from a photograph or painting”. Reality or its representation. In surf dayThe challenge was precisely, says the novelist, to manage to remain “in this interlude”and bring out the “inner landscape” what Le Havre, where she spent her childhood and adolescence, is for her. To better reflect the shape of this city, almost completely destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombing, and rebuilt according to the plans of the architect Auguste Perret, “infuse” in the reader’s mind. “A landscapeShe said, It is something that could remain once we close our eyes. The work of writing is to organize stories, situations, characters, in a very organic bath that is that of language, to give the sensation of that experience. »
So let’s forget about visiting the city. And let’s not count on Maylis de Kerangal to tell us anecdotes about the shady places she frequented when she lived there. Not willing to dwell on the details of her biography, the writer, born in Toulon in 1967, does not hesitate, on the contrary, to let her thoughts wander according to the hypotheses that are proposed to her. She prefers to reveal herself by thinking out loud. Revealing, through her hesitations, her need for precision and the sincere attention she pays to her interlocutor, her mentality and her sensitivity rather than what could have determined them.
Coincidences
Each of the books she has published over the past twenty-four years, the writer notes, “signs” to the Norman city. But this is the first time that the latter has become a real “dream matrix”. “In this book I have the impression that I have left more space than usual to the dreamlike part of my writing”the author slides Birth of a bridge (Verticales, 2010) through a question about the coincidences that mark surf day.
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