That self-help literature it can be camouflaged in works of fiction is nothing new. From Jorge Bucay but also Paulo Coelho, and even if we go back to great allegorical works like The Little Prince, we always discover that suggestion, from the philosophy of the everyday to the spiritual, is approached even better from the metaphorical of a story to be told.
The French writer knows it well Raphaelle Giordano, determined to transfer her informative interest in life coaching through lively plots to devour.
This is how this author manages to make what she wants to tell us more interesting, hook and reach deeper with that always empathic reflection that leads us to inhabit other lives observed with reservations at the beginning of each story and completely camouflaged as we advance in their credible personalities, faced with circumstances made ours in the end.
3 best novels by Raphaëlle Giordano
The Polka Dot Zebra Bazaar
With his shades between parabolic and fabulous, Giordano paves the way towards a reunion with a reading purity of the child that we are still facing discovery. The result is an illuminating change of focus…
Basile Vega, a charismatic and attractive inventor, sets up his business, The Polka Dot Zebra Bazaar, in the small town of Mont-Venus. The store offers its customers more than just unique gadgets: it opens their minds and encourages them to take risks and apply creativity to everyday problems. Little by little, Vega's teachings will bring out the best in some of the locals. This is the case of Arthur, a misunderstood teenager who sees graffiti as a means of artistic expression, and that of his mother, Giulia, a woman stuck in a profession that no longer satisfies her.
However, there are also those who see the business as a threat, something that subverts the established order, so the local forces, led by an intolerant journalist, will start a campaign against this wave of dreams and new projects that is changing reality from town.
The day the lions will eat green salad
Romane is still confident in the possible recomposition of the human race. She is a stubborn young woman, determined to discover the irrational lion that we all carry inside. Our own ego is the worst lion, only that the fable in this case has little of a happy ending. Raphaëlle Giordano, an expert in double reading novels, reveals to us how our society immerses us in false perceptions of ourselves that we end up strictly complying.
In a world where error is punished and rectification even more so, despite the fact that it is advocated that erring is wise ... Who is capable of recognizing an error without ending up finding an external conditioner for it? In the end, it is about strengthening your own perspective, the unique ideal of how things are done well and your own truth as a solution to every mess.
That is what makes us lions. And that attitude is what Romane is willing to eradicate from his patients for the good of all, from the rest of the fauna that surrounds the king of the jungle and for the ultimate good of the king himself, who may end up crouching and defeated, licking his own wounds without to know how he has been able to cause them himself. We know Maximilien Vogue. The prototype of the winner and emblem of a lion in full hatching phase, with that inexhaustible and fierce ambition. A being really toxic even to himself.
Because ... do you know something? the lion, when he has no suitable victims, may end up deciding to devour himself. In fact, he does it a little bit from time to time, with the most obvious natural result today: unhappiness. Whether you are more or less a lion, with this novel you will learn to identify those hairy kings of the asphalt steppe of our days. And acknowledging it will help you try to appease the beast while ensuring that you will never become like him. By the way, certain indications suggest that man is more inclined to become that ambitious lion due to social tendencies. so watch out!
Your second life begins when you discover that you only have one
The good Raphaëlle has a problem with the titles and knowing how to synthesize. But come on, if it convinces you like this, nothing happens 🙂 The rutinitis that the author talks about in this book is more a consequence of the new totems of happiness that marketing creates and the real emptiness that is discovered in many cases when you get them. Nothing material will make you happy in the ultimate sense of the term, which is what matters because it is the one that fills the necessary gaps that material can never fill. This novel serves as a therapy for those gaps that we can find so assiduously in modern life.
The emptiness is the overt rutinitis after seeing that no matter how much there is in the pockets, there is nothing in the heart. Camille is a modern Dante, midway through life and in her hell circles of dissatisfaction. With the usual comic vis of this author we inhabit that life of Camille in which she only sees emptiness, nullity. Work and home instead of dedication and home. Boredom as it derives from love ...
Claude or Camille's opportunity to suddenly vent with a stranger. Claude and the plan to get carried away towards a new prism with which to change the chip. And of course the rutinitis will go away with him, because poor Camille doesn't know where she's gotten herself. The question is whether there will finally be teaching in a therapy for crazy people. Because yes, happiness in the end also needs certain drops of madness to fill its flavor fully.
Other interesting books by Raphaelle Giordano…
Cupid has cardboard wings
Writing a romance novel is not the same as writing a self-help novel about love. Nor is it a matter of differentiating to determine what is best.
The point is that knowing the previous works of Raphaëlle, we could imagine that he was not going to tiptoe through matters of the heart, telling a good story but without that intention of coaching.
And look how difficult it is, because here everyone loves as they want and they let them ... The point is that there is a component of fear in love. Perhaps not in the first love to which you can give yourself to the open grave, but when it is known that the infatuation can break from one side or the other at any moment, fears of failure or an open wound are awakened.
The paradigmatic situation is presented to us through Meredith and Antoine. Of course, the author focuses on Meredith's perspective. There is no doubt that this girl needs that general tune-up before she surrenders to love without further fear.
Better a risky first getaway than abandonment when Meredith has given it her all. In her race against time to discover how to surrender to love, she ends up taking a half-year sabbatical to discover her insides to the fullest, her emotional weaknesses and the strengths that can take her to the battlefield of love with guarantees of success.
After that time, Antoine may no longer be there, but the journey to herself may be worth it if she manages, first of all, to love herself.
