Marc Desaubliaux tells us the very particular love story between Fabrice, fifteen years old, and a woman much older than him. A superb writing style for a book on a delicate subject.
The novel opens with a short prologue in which we discover Fabrice’s passion for drawing. This passage takes place in June 1968, a month before he sets off on a trip to England that will change his life. This passage, which echoes another part later in the text and then takes on full meaning, intrigues because on one hand it shows the dreamy boy that Fabrice is at fifteen, but also all the beauty of the author’s writing.
“The large white sheet spreads out on Fabrice’s bedroom desk. On it, the red pencil outlines the imaginary borders of a country born from the adolescent’s dreams. […] Strange painting, abstract forms where he lays down all his personality.”
We then take a journey through time to find Fabrice in 2009 receiving a letter from Margaret Crown, his host forty years earlier during a language stay. This letter has strong consequences for Fabrice as it revives the pains of that trip to England. The story then takes us through both periods in parallel to tell us the very particular love story between this shy young boy and this mature woman.
Marc Desaubliaux has managed to make us become attached to Fabrice both when he is fifteen and when he is fifty-six. We love the teenager for his timidity and good manners which prevent him from saying no and get him trapped by a woman full of desire. And we are attached to the mature man who has had a very lonely life and has never managed to overcome what happened to him during that trip. And yet, following Margaret Crown’s letter, he goes back to see her, forty years later, even though they had parted on a bad note and had never seen each other or even spoken since.
The author’s long descriptions allow us to fully immerse ourselves in Fabrice’s life, and especially in this episode of July 1968 during his trip to England. We follow the entire progression of his story and gradually discover the repercussions of Margaret Crown’s actions. Because, years later, Fabrice still suffers psychological consequences from it.
The subject is very delicate, but the author has succeeded in sensitizing us without repulsing us. His fluid writing style and delicate approach to awkward passages show all his mastery. His writing is perfect for dealing with such a subject. You can find Marc Desaubliaux in other novels published by Des auteurs des livres, including notably “Journal du désespoir” which tells the story of a teenager who writes everything he is not able to express in a school notebook.
