A great example of a late vocation writer, and a new exponent of slow maceration for quality literature. There are authors like Pierre Lemaitre to whom literature has always accompanied them, perhaps without knowing it. And when literature explodes, when the need to write becomes imperative, very valuable works end up being born that seem to have been written in that period of latency of the writer who has not yet assumed his destiny.
Living is writing books. Discovering that you also know how to write for others may only be a matter of time. AND Pierre Lemaitre He does it well, damn well. Backed by one of those alter egos (especially Camille Verhoeven) who serve the author as a transmission belt to narrate and transmit concerns. Because the crime novel that this author has focused on also has his point of social criticism.
Thanks to that mix of black gender, with intriguing plots and dark approaches, with a point of social vindication. Lemaitre has won several awards. Never better than in the case of Lemaitre, the important thing is not to arrive earlier, but to arrive on time. It is the good thing about the writing profession, it is never too late to start.
3 recommended novels by Pierre Lemaitre
the great serpent
What are you going to do, I like the eccentric, the anomalous. And this novel is different from what Lemaitre normally delivers. And in that sudden estrangement there is also magic made into literature. Without abandoning his fondness for noir, this brilliant French writer pulls out of his sleeve a plot on that threshold, between humor and suspense, to which only capable authors with the will to experience contrasts appear...
One should always be wary of well-dressed, retired-looking middle-aged ladies accompanied by a skittish Dalmatian, like Mathilde Perrin, a plump sixty-three-year-old widow under whose nondescript appearance hides a gun-for-hire from easy trigger and nerves of steel.
Skilled and diligent in handling large-caliber weapons, able to slip past the police and wear down her pursuers, this veteran Resistance hero ruthlessly executes the assignments of a mysterious commander when she's not tending her garden outside of Paris. However, her frequent carelessness and the bad character of the once perfectionist Mathilde, which make her increasingly uncontrollable and disturbing, begin to worry the upper echelons, ready to get rid of her before it's too late.
Brilliant combination of a clever and precise plot with a fast pace, The Great Serpent is the first crime novel written by Pierre Lemaitre. A chained murder board loaded with scathing dialogue, shocking scenes and large doses of caustic and gritty humor.
Wedding dress
A masterpiece of the current noir genre is one that manages to go beyond reading to achieve a somatization of tension, pain or anguish, of the disturbing drift of its plot. Lemaitre succeeds with this ingenious novel that puzzles even the threshold of madness.
Because nothing is more intense than that literary diving exercise to the depths of a character. The point is that if, in addition, the reasons for such a trip to the abyssal depths of the personality serve to address even the unconscious as a labyrinth where the exit seems essential to rebuild a whole life, the matter takes on a metalliterary magnitude.
Surely as you progress through the novel you will begin to intuit what is happening around Sophie's world, who is the one that pulls the strings and all that ..., but beyond that trompe l'oeil that seems to be smarter than hunger as reader, you will end up enjoying the how and why also later.
Sophie Duguet does not understand what is happening to her: she loses objects, forgets situations, is arrested in a supermarket for petty thefts that she does not remember committing. And the corpses begin to accumulate around him ...
Inhuman Resources
Starting late is not synonymous with being limited by age, not at least in the art of writing fiction. Lemaitre grows with each new proposal. A story as black as it is potentially real ...
I present to you Alain Delambre, former director of Human Resources and now unemployed. The paradox of the current labor system represented in this character. In this book Inhuman Resources, we dress in Alain's skin at the age of fifty-seven and participate in his discovery of the other side of the job placement process, that of someone looking for a job.
Your age is not the most conducive to finding a new job. His resume does not seem to matter, too bulky and with too many trade-offs associated with his professionalism. Not good for the cheap, young-staffing machine. The job search becomes a dead end for Alain. At the beginning of the story drops of a black humor sprinkle between an easily recognizable situation in our reality. But little by little the plot is drifting towards an anguished scenario, where Alain will succumb to despair.
Out of work, without dignity and completely desperate, Alain seizes on any opportunity to try to find himself back in active society. But opportunities come with risks. His family relationships suffer and his general condition abruptly worsens.
And there comes a time when as a reader, you are surprised to find yourself reading a crime novel with dramatic real overtones. What Alain can do to regain his dignity surpasses anything he imagined. What you can feel in the midst of despair is something that drenches and splashes you, even with the very drops of blood of a nascent violence.
Finding work as a true thriller, a suspense story, a push to an extreme that sometimes does not seem so far away in our daily lives. Interesting novel that is read with concern, but once you have looked at it you will not be able to stop reading.
Other recommended books by Pierre Lemaitre…
the wide world
The world is a stage for all kinds of stories intertwined with the common denominator of survival. Seen in essence it is about that. From this consideration, an exciting story like this fits perfectly, a mixture of genres stripped of artifice to overflow in humanism with its good part and its dark side, with its assessment of what makes us human in the best sense of the word and what makes us It does even worse than some beasts, if necessary...
Beirut, Paris, Saigon, 1948. A hectic family saga full of secrets, adventures, love affairs, shady deals and crimes. the wide world narrates the adventures, misadventures, adventures and secrets of the Pelletiers, a family that owns a soap factory in Beirut, a city under French influence, with the Indochina War and post-war Paris and reconstruction as a backdrop. And all with a touch of exoticism and several murders.
Lemaitre tells us three love stories, two processions, the story of Buddha and Confucius, the adventures of an ambitious journalist, a tragic death, the life of Joseph the cat, the mistreatment of an unbearable wife, government corruption, a descent to hell... A masterful novel, luminous and dark at the same time, tender and hard, full of turns, captivating, which plays deliciously with the codes of the serial.
Silence and anger
The wide world continues to expand with this installment that begins with that energetic narrative toast in the style of "The Sound and the Fury", by faulkner. And although the inspiration may be a remote echo, the combination of words in this case goes further. Because there is a contrast between silence and anger, like that calm that precedes the storm. Even more so in the case of characters that we already know very well...
Paris, 1952. After moving to the French capital from Beirut, the Pelletier brothers face the challenges posed by their adopted city. When Hélène arrives in Chevrigny, a town in deep France, to carry out a report commissioned by the Journal duSoir, she witnesses the human dramas of those who will be expelled forever from their homes and, in that context, her life will turn upside down. unexpected.
Meanwhile, his brother François, a determined journalist for the same Parisian newspaper, must discover who Nine really is, while Jean, the inept older brother, tormented by his diabolical wife, Geneviève, faces his violent impulses and, once again, tries to flee from justice.
Rosy & John
A good book to get in touch with the author and his fetish character Verhoeben. Something lighter than the aforementioned, but full of the dark Lemaitre touch and a very lively rhythm.
Summary: Jean Garnier is a lonely young man who has lost everything: his job, after the mysterious death of his boss; his girlfriend, in a freak accident, and Rosie, his mother and main support, who has been imprisoned.
To unleash his pain, he plans to explode seven shells, one a day, in different parts of the French geography. After the first outbreak, he turns himself in to the police. His only condition to avoid catastrophe is the liberation of his mother. Commissioner Verhoeben is faced with a great dilemma: is Jean a lunatic with delusions of grandeur or a real threat to the entire country?
