What You Need from the Night
by Laurent Petitmangin
Translated by Shaun Whiteside
In a depressed town in the French Lorraine, the unnamed male narrator, a manual worker active in local socialist party circles, raises his two sons Frédéric or “Fus” and Gillou on his own, after the premature death of his wife, affectionately remembered as “la moman”. The family is closely-knit, but the narrator and Fus start drifting apart after Fus joins an extreme right group aligned to the Front National.
Ce qu’il faut de nuit, now available in an English translation by Shaun Whiteside as What You Need from the Night, is Laurent Petitmangin’s debut novel. And what a powerful work it is. It explores – without any judgmental attitude – what might draw a young man (and, perhaps, even older generations) to extremist ideologies. Despite the strong political theme, however, this is primarily – as the author himself admitted – a “love story between a father and his two sons”. In this respect, it is a brilliant psychological study of a man who is torn between the potent bond he has with his elder son and the equally strong abhorrence for that same son’s dubious life decisions. The result is often moving and poignant, with the final chapters being particularly hard-hitting.
Reviews of the French original
refer to the novella’s use of local dialect. Although Whiteside’s translation
seems to miss this element, it certainly does not disappoint as it is beautifully
and poetically rendered.
No comments:
Post a Comment