Four novels, a collection of short stories, three biographies, an essay on history, one on philosophy, one on political science, a book on the French language and an atlas… Here are the brief reviews of thirteen outstanding works of this forty-fourth week of the year.
Novel. “Le Mal Bonita” by Emma Becker
In Misconduct (Albin Michel, 2022), Emma Becker recounted the series of sexual and romantic failures generated by her search for intensity, at a time in her life when she feared being dissolved by motherhood. Pretty evil It seems to be the negative, since it is a passion that provides uninterrupted orgasms in addition to overwhelming sensations. The one that links the author-narrator, married, mother of two small children, with a man who, of course, is not her type: an aristocratic writer, lover of trifles and collaborative authors. To try to keep her hand even when she tips over, and because all her texts testify to a shameless conception of literature as a place of nudity, Emma Becker writes while she lives it, over three seasons, this story, one of these “dramas that are presented disguised as miracles”. He describes the sex scenes with an energy, enthusiasm and precision that is exhausted by the exhaustive nature of the story. Which is never as convincing as in the pages in which the author distances himself a little from this romantic frenzy. R.L.
“Le Mal Bonita”, by Emma Becker, ed. Albin Michel, 420 p., 21.90 euros, digital 15 euros.
Biography. “Elizabeth II”, by Philippe Chassaigne
If her uncle Edward VIII had not abdicated in December 1938, allowing George VI to ascend the throne, she would not have become queen of the United Kingdom in 1952. Seventy years later, after the death of Elizabeth II, the record The longevity of his reign was only surpassed, at a European level, by that of Louis XIV, which was two years longer.
The academic Philippe Chassaigne, author of a History of England from its origins to the present (Flammarion, 2020), tells how it was consolidated as “comforting element of continuity” during periods when the country lost its colonies, while “the pound sterling [cessait] play the slightest role as a reserve currency” and that in terms of GDP per capita it was degrading “from fifth place in 1952 to twenty-first in 2021.” The author elegantly weaves together public and private events, geopolitical, parliamentary, economic and personal, to evoke the way in which the history of Elizabeth II and that of her country may have merged, responded to each other and how the queen accommodated herself. to “The era of hypermediatization.” He examines her reports with her fifteen prime ministers and concludes that she was “a model of constitutional monarch”praise that does not prevent other less kind judgments, in particular about the opacity that he had organized around his fortune. R.L.
You have 84.48% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
