With the Animals

by Noëlle Revaz

Considered the standard-bearer for the great Franco-Swiss literary tradition, exemplified by authors such as Jacques Chessex and C. F. Ramuz, No?lle Revaz may also remind English-language readers of Louis-Ferdinand C? "With the Animals," her shocking debut, is a novel of mud and blood whose linguistic audaciousness is matched only by its brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor. Narrated by the singular Paul--a violent, narrowminded farmer whose unceasing labor leaves him with more love for his livestock than his family--"With the Animals" is at once a fantastically exaggerated and entirely honest portrait of masculinity gone mad. With his mute and detested wife and children huddled at his side, Paul is only roused from his regimen of hard labor and casual cruelty when a farmhand, Georges, comes to work on his property for the summer. His sovereignty seemingly threatened, an element of unwanted humanity now injected into his universe, Paul's little kingdom seems ripe at last for a revolution.

Genres: Fiction, Novels, 21st Century, Literary Fiction, Roman, Literature

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Noëlle Revaz, née en 1968 à Vernayaz dans le canton du Valais, est un écrivain suisse d'expression française.
Son premier roman Rapport aux bêtes, publié en 2002 aux éditions Gallimard et qui obtient plusieurs prix littéraires dont le Prix Schiller, et le Prix Marguerite Audoux, est traduit en allemand, en anglais, en italien et en finois.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

When reading With the Animals, one can imagine what it must have been like for sensitive Noëlle Revaz to grow up in Switzerland's rustic hinterland. How much contact with farms and farmers did she have? How much coarseness, brutality, hardship and violence did she witness?

In the process of claiming her own voice as a Swiss novelist, Noëlle Revaz recounts how she created a unique slant on the French language when writing With the Animals, her first novel, language that can not be identified or pinned down to any particular regional dialect, language where "she allowed herself to be guided by the music of words and the rhythms of sentences at the expense of grammatical rules" (from Translator's Note). And respecting the translation, W. Donald Wilson deserves much praise for rendering the author's idiosyncratic French into lively, colorful English.

With the Animals is a minor classic, a mesmerizing novel told in first-person where the narrator is Paul, a man who owns his own farm. And mesmerizing is not overstatement - the book's language casts a spell on a reader as if by magic, so much so the more you read, the more you will become enthralled - precisely the fate of a young lady by the name of Anis in Laurence Cossé's A Novel Bookstore.

From a certain perspective, hypnotic language is exactly what is needed for a reader to keep turning the pages since the world according to Paul the farmer can be rough going, correction, make that extremely rough going: Paul has emotionally abused and beaten his wife into silence; he is the father of eight children but, by his judgement, they count for far less than his animals; he's a drinker and possesses the constricted heart of a man both power-hungry and selfish in the extreme. However, it must be conceded, Paul's viciousness does not extend to his animals: "What you've got to keep in mind is never to be mean to one that could never understand such a level of meanness: for example with the animals it's no use yelling, being as they never understand a word you say." One of Noëlle Revaz's frequent strokes of black humor.

But Paul is in for a shake up - enter Jorge, called Georges by Paul, his new farmhand from Portugal. For starters, Georges is gentle and sweet and has a special connection with all of life, including the animals: "Georges, he gets on famous with the cows, he has a trick: he talks a bit and they come rubbing themselves against him all friendly and licking in his palm, even when there's no salt. It galls you the way he can win them. They just need a whistle from him to come looking near happy you'd say, though when I call they never even lift an ear. But me, I couldn't give a rat's fart. There's not a speak of jealousy in me." Ha! Not a wee bit of jealousy, Paul? Again, the author's cup of black humor runneth over.

Georges' compassion finds particular expression in his relationship with Paul's wife, Vulva. As an aside, it is worth noting Noëlle Revaz confessed a sense of shame she was obliged to overcome in using this name but such a name was befitting Paul's character, reducing people to the level of his animals: "Why is Vulva called Vulva? . . . It's like when they're born, the way the first time you see their mug the names come into your head and you just say "Blossom" or "Louise" straight off, though you've never thought of it before, for it's the name suits them, and there's no call to think women come by theirs any other way."

Of course, Paul feels threatened by his farmhand's compassionate nature and reduces Georges' grace and humanity to his own suffocating ways: "if Georges is that interested it wouldn't surprise me if he's not so much thinking of me but of getting her into his own bed, and that's why he's always wanting to help Vulva and protect her from the clouts, even if she goes looking for them herself."

Every scene in the tale offers further insight into protagonist Paul. And Georges is the perfect counterpoint, a large, muscular, romantic man from the city with an education in Latin and the arts. One particular episode is most revealing - it's when Georges insists Paul send a letter to his wife who is in the hospital recovering from surgery - the removal of a huge lump that formed in her abdomen. ""Think a little of your lady, he says, Georges, making free to put himself inside my head. "Just think a bit how she's lovely and the tender feelings that come when you think about her hair and her looks and the rest." . . . Me, I don't claim to know much about pens, and I haven't enough bumptious pride to say to myself inward: 'This here Portuguese is getting on my nerves with his wordings. He always fancies he's better than everyone else, the god damn darkie.'"

I've included a good number of direct quotes to underscore With the Animals is a novel where the language counts every bit as much as the succession of events. And Paul's backstory? We learn Paul was an only son, his Pa was a woman-hater, his mother a child beater. And other doings where Paul has much to mull over: Georges' affair with another farmer's wife (Paul catches Georges having sex with her out in the woods); Georges converting the very room in the farmhouse Paul set aside as a memorial to his Pa to be a special, fancy room for Vulva; Georges teaching Paul's children how to paint; Georges' philosophy of love.

I highly, highly recommend With the Animals. I could go on, but I'll let Noëlle Revaz have the last word. Art lover that I am, here's one quote of which I'm particularly fond: "All the youngsters is inside, for outside the sky's thundery and it's Sunday as well so there's no school, and after the pork, the sauce, and the noodles, and the things you gorge yourself on with the Good Lord's blessing, Georges he said it'd be a grand idea to stay at the table all of us and take out the brushes and paint what we'd like or whatever comes into our heads. All the youngsters said yes, and I said we'll have to see, seeing that since I was a child, since before I grew up and got big and mature and broadened out, I've never taken up any paints, apart from the brown one on the gates. Georges he said: "You can do what you like, everyone's free." and then one of the youngsters said to do the house, and all the others set about it, and me and Georges as well."


Swiss author Noëlle Revaz, born 1968

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

A triumphant feat of translation, reinventing the poetic mangled French into poetic mangled English with applausal aplomb. The monologue of a revolting abusive farmer, a paranoid, retrograde, superinflated cockwad from a Zola novel, covering the period of his wife’s (known as Vulva) cancer treatment to her recovery. An excoriating tale of misogyny and backwoods brainlessness, a strangely atemporal novel that could relate as much to the 2010s as the 1910s. Essential Dalkeyism.

[Bogdan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je ne pensais pas que le français — cette très fine « langue de la raison »*, vieux cliché mais tout de même assez vrai — puisse être tellement beau dans sa folie agrammaticale. À mon avis, Noëlle Revaz écrit au niveau de Faulkner ou de Krasznahorkai.


*Tout le monde sait que Descartes en a fait la langue de la science et de la philosophie modernes, en la préférant au latin. Mais il est un peu marrant de lire un extrait d’un texte présenté en 1784 par un certain Antoine de Rivarol à un concours intitulé « Qu’est-ce qui a rendu la langue française universelle »:

"Ce qui distingue notre langue des langues anciennes et des autres langues modernes, c’est l’ordre et la construction de la phrase. Cet ordre doit être direct et nécessairement clair. Le Français nomme d’abord le sujet du discours, ensuite le verbe qui est l’action, et enfin l’objet de cette action : voilà la logique naturelle à tous les hommes ; voilà ce qui constitue le sens commun. Or cet ordre, si favorable, si nécessaire au Raisonnement, est presque toujours contraire aux sensations, qui nomment le premier l’objet qui frappe l’esprit. C’est pourquoi tous les peuples, abandonnant l’ordre direct, ont eu recours aux tournures plus ou moins hardies, selon que leurs sensations ou l’harmonie des mots l’exigeaient ; et l’inversion a prévalu sur la terre, parce que l’homme est plus impérieusement gouverné par les passions que par la Raison. La langue française, par un privilège unique, est seule restée fidèle à l’ordre direct, comme si elle était toute Raison, et on a beau par les mouvements les plus variés et toutes les ressources du style, déguiser cet ordre, il faut toujours qu’il existe ; et c’est en vain que les passions nous bouleversent et nous sollicitent de suivre l’ordre des sensations : la syntaxe française est incorruptible. C’est de là que résulte cette admirable clarté, base éternelle de notre langue. Ce qui n’est pas clair n’est pas français. Pour apprendre les langues à inversion, il suffit de connaître les mots et leurs régimes ; pour apprendre le Français, il faut d’abord retenir l’ordonnancement des mots."

Source de la citation : https://dlfgard.blogspot.com/2019/09/...

[João Reis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rapport aux Bêtes, by Swiss writer Noëlle Revaz, is a fabulous novel. As a true literary masterpiece, it is both an intellectual and an emotional feat.
As I fear I can't possibly describe its awesomeness, I will keep it short: Paul has a farm (in France or francophone Switzerland, we never get to know it), a wife she calls Vulve (yes, Vulva), whose real name is never referred, and a bunch of kids whose names and age he doesn't even know. Paul is a brute who hates women and thinks only of the farm and his cows, and Vulva is a victim who lives almost imprisoned on the farm; she is subjected by her husband to all kinds of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse. And then, Paul gets Jorge, a Portuguese farmhand (whom he calls Georges and who comes originally from Brazil), to help him throughout the summer. Jorge is the very opposite of Paul, and he will have a huge impact on the farm. For example, he calls the doctor and they find out Vulva has cancer...

This is a novel of voice and ambiance, a great achievement by Revaz, who takes us inside Paul's mind and creates a powerful, believable almost-illiterate language, and the novel is both heartbreaking and hilarious, and also a perfect example of francophone melancholy gallows humour.
It's a timeless tale of violence, backwardness, misogyny, animal and human exploitation, racism, mental illness, marital problems, misanthropy, shrewdness, and loneliness.
Highly recommended.

[This novel was translated into English by W. Donald Wilson - beautifully, it seems - and published by Dalkey Archive Press.]

[WJEP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul is a cross between Isak in Growth of the Soil and Rodney Dangerfield in Natural Born Killers. The story is told through Paul's bumpkin voice and thoughts. Every paragraph seems to contain a barb directed at his wife or some nugget of clodhopper wit.

But Noëlle wouldn't have done all this merely for my amusement. Will the story end with cataclysmic feminist vengeance? Will she condemn 10,000 years of civilization because it was erected by hayseed overlords like Paul? I shouldn't have been so nervous, because in the end read it yourself, you lazy sluggard.

[Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vulva. This is what Paul, the illiterate farmer-narrator of Revaz's With the Animals calls his wife. Lest you think it's a form of tenderness when he calls her "my Vulva," rest assured, "it's not often I call her 'my,' and more often it's 'that big lump,' or 'that floozy,' or 'that sow,' except when the opportunity comes up when you need to show your ownership, that you've a stake in the matter and you're master over her." Paul is unsure of the names and number of their offspring, but each of his animals has a name and a history.

Such is Paul's relationship to his metonym of a wife. His physically and sexually abusive relationship to her is complicated by two potentially life-altering situations. The first, the arrival of the summer's farmhand (or intern), Jorge--immediately renamed "Georges" by Paul--and second, the discovery that Vulva has cancer. Georges is a former medical student who fancies himself an expert of female nature. He undertakes to soften Paul, to humanize "Vulvia" (Georges' accent). When Vulva leaves the farm for the hospital to receive radiation treatment, Georges finds himself alone with Paul, in other words, alone with the animals.

SPOILER (or at least this reader's speculation):
It seems to me this would make an incredibly disturbing horror film in the vein of "students get more than they bargain for when they study abroad." Vulva is essentially kidnapped, raped and impregnated against her will (over and over). Her physical and social isolation prolong the abuse. When Jorge arrives, he seems to understand her situation and endeavors to rescue her. This attempt is successful so long as Vulva remains in hospital, but alas, Georges' tenure at the farm comes up in September, and Vulva once again finds herself vulnerable and unprotected. She's survived only to endure further abuse. But does she? Curious whether other readers speculated that Vulva was responsible for the outbreak of illness that decimates the farm? Was Paul's mother responsible for the illness that nearly destroyed it years before Vulva's arrival? What to make of this: "That time on the farm, long before Georges ever set foot on it, after the fridge broke down, after that meat gave us the big stomach upset, Vulva never felt a thing in her bacon and ate by herself alone at the table that night with a smile on her mug just like we was all there"?

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

On a rural farm the narrator, Paul, rules his isolated post as a tyrant. He treats his wife and children worse than he treats his animals, abusing them mentally and physically. This is a harrowing tale. He barely considers his wife as worthy of his attention. The children are an indeterminate lump, referred to as ‘the young ones’ and never by name.
Paul does welcome a Portuguese farmhand, George, to the farm. Though paranoiac of George disturbing his domain, Paul steadily warms to his companionship.
Revaz has crafted a fascinating and unique character in Paul, whose terse narration is a melange of malformed words and coarse slang, giving him an almost inhuman quality. There is more than an element of the southern gothic to it, Woodrell’s Red Atkins comes to mind, from The Death of Sweet Mister.
She is unrelenting in what she reveals about this man and his ‘marriage’, and the prose takes on an overwhelming, almost suffocating, quality that mirrors what is being communicated. Yet skilfully Revaz still makes some empathy for Paul possible. His cows, unlike his children, have names and get his attention.
This is an unreliable narrator, but so darkly warped that it is impossible to know what is real and what is just a figment of his sordid imagination.
His wife falls ill, is hospitalised, and returns to recuperate weeks later. At the novel’s conclusion Paul sits with his wife, puts an arm around her shoulder. A tender moment perhaps? No way. This isn’t about a man becoming a better person. Rather a clever ploy by Revaz to see if we will take the bait.
How then can this brutal piece of writing possibly work? Because, there are those fragile, transient moments when, despite all we know, we hold on to the hope a man can become more than an animal.
A cleverly written and daring first novel.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A chthonic excoriation-via-mimcry of peasant logic, hyper-masculine or otherwise. It had me at "brutality, misanthropy, and gallows humor." I'm surrounded by Pauls. I see the podunk backwoods iconography of their brainless Brotherhood plastered on every truck-boat-truck roaring with righteous entitlement. They are belligerently vocal with their three certainties: Jesus saves, gummint can kiss my ass, and bitches ain't nothin but trubba. They are as sentimental as schoolgirls and as consistent as their red-hatted orange-faced Great Leader, the most loathsome human being whose own loathing for all the Pauls is palpable but who is, nonetheless, "just like us!" And they are ubiquitous. You can find the rest of the definitive guide to deciphering peasant logic in Darconville’s Cat. Revaz's novel transcribes the directionless rage and maudlin self-pity of a man (a MAN'S MAN, but not like that, hell naw!) determined to find out why everydamnbody but him has got they head shoved up they own asses. Good luck, Pauls of the world, just keep drinking and hollering until the world bends to your will, and at the crescendo of your inevitable failure try to spare a couple innocent bystanders so your legacy of badassery can live forever.

[Bud Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Put this in the ‘Best novels Bud Smith ever read pile and you should read it too and hurry the hell up.”

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

nominated for the translation prize 2013, but didn't win, but should have.
paul is the narrator of this novel, he is a small farmer in france in 21st century, but other than the tractors, could very well be 19th cent.
he doesn't really know the names of his many children, and calls his wife vulva, but he DOES know the names of the milk cows, and all the fields and woods around his place.
he speaks and thinks in a patois of farmer/hillbilly/caveman, but do not let that seem he is dumb or non-thinking. he has all the same fears and passions of any human, modern or otherwise, but just sounds like a doof. well, take that back, he IS a monster, but has flashes of insight, poetry, empathy (mostly for the cows though), humanness.
perhaps this rural fiction would drive feminists to distraction, but well worth the read ntl, if for nothing else to see into the dark heart of many men, tit-tuggers or urban effetes. clap clap clap for author revaz and translator wilson.
here is a great essay on why wilson should have won this prize, and very thoughtful on revaz as a writer and this story in particular.

http://www.rochester.edu/College/tran...

[lyell bark · Rating 4 out of 5]

i also like cows

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s hard to put any finger on ‘why’ this book works so well—without devolving into asshole semanticism—but it is an incredible, truly stunning work. Its subject matter and homespun ugliness obfuscate and reveal a true beauty, perhaps broken, in alternating shafts of light and shadow. Like a windmill with the sun behind it, these pulsing beams become hypnotic and Revaz renders the hardscrabble as the variously unforgiving tableaux they really are. I’m awed by her talent. What a book.

[Gabe Cweigenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A landmark in the creation of fictional language as well as translation held back by a slow going, repetitive plot with little to offer on the back end but melodrama and a final line that doesn’t add up.

[Full Stop]

http://www.full-stop.net/2012/06/05/r...

Review by Roxane Gay

We are beasts: in our desires, in how we move through the world, in how we relate to our environments and the people around us. I am intrigued by fiction in which the line between people and animals is deliberately blurred, in which the façade of human civility is eroded. With the Animals, written by Swiss writer Noëlle Revaz and translated by W. Donald Wilson, is one such book, merciless and unwavering in baring the animal nature of the human race. This is a novel that tells a familiar story — that of a brutal marriage — in a shocking but strangely refreshing manner. You will not find trite melodrama or rehashed themes. With the Animals does not have a traditional sense of plot, diction, or characterization, but the story presented is nonetheless fully and brilliantly realized.

The premise is horrifying and inescapable. A man, Paul, who relates more to animals than to other people, is married. He calls his wife, Vulvia, “that stupid lump of a Vulva.” Paul is brutal, thinking so little of his wife as to try to erase her identity completely. He dismisses the woman she was before she met him and hardly considers the woman she has become to be worth his time and attention. Paul is a man who seems as confused by his wife as he is repulsed by her. The couple also has children, but how many is unclear. The children are mostly an indeterminate mass of youth — the “young ones” Paul calls them, because he cannot be bothered to know their names.

Read more here: http://www.full-stop.net/2012/06/05/r...

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is beautifully crafted and Paul is a very believable character. I wanted to like this book more than I did because it did a great job of portraying an unreliable narrator. However, sometimes it was frustrating to be filtered through Paul because of how slowly he comes to realizations.

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its pretty clear that Paul is gay and in love with his exotic farmhand, Georges

[Tom Buchanan · Rating 5 out of 5]

"hussying plagueries"

[Vaniglia Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul è un fattore, che vive nella campagna svizzera allevando vacche, in estrema semplicità e ruspante rozzezza. Per farsi aiutare con il lavoro della fattoria, molto intenso e pesante durante i mesi estivi, assume Jorge, un operaio portoghese piuttosto atipico, che al suo paese “insegna una lingua morta” ma che ben si adatta alla faticosa vita di campagna, rivolgendo anche un occhio attento all’ambiente familiare e sociale che lo circonda. Paul ha una moglie di cui non si conosce il nome, poiché lui le ha dato un appellativo con cui la apostrofa con una sua particolare forma di affetto maldestro, e che in casa e in paese è noto a tutti: la Vulva. Buona per sfacchinare nella fattoria e per aprire le gambe di notte, la Vulva è in realtà piuttosto graziosa, di pensiero fine e certamente più acculturata di Paul, che la tratta pressappoco come carne da macello, facendole sfornare una sfilza di mocciosi che alla lunga se ne è perso il conto e neppure si saprebbe più metterli in fila giusti in ordine di età. Un certo giorno, però, la Vulva smette di funzionare a dovere, e Paul ne rimane oltremodo contrariato: è una Vulva malata, con uno gnocco che le cresce dentro la pancia, quella che è costretta ad andarsene dalla fattoria in totale solitudine per essere curata nell’ospedale di città. Lì viene abbandonata dall’ignorante Paul ed è solo grazie alla sensibilità di Jorge, capace di scombinare gli equilibri e mettere in discussione le certezze, che potrà ricevere almeno una visita durante la sua lunga degenza.

“«Sì, ma la mia Vulva?» chiedo.
Non è spesso che dico la mia, più spesso dico la culona, quella sgualdrina, la megera tranne quando si presenta l’occasione in cui c’è da mostrare che si possiede, che la cosa concerne e che si è il suo padrone“.

Noëlle Revaz, quasi cinquantenne autrice svizzera di umili origini, sesta di nove figli, con il suo romanzo d’esordio spiazza il lettore fin dalle prime righe, quando gli fa conoscere la Vulva: un nome che indica la parte per il tutto. La donna vista come fattrice, come una delle sue vacche, da Paul, marito-padrone quasi analfabeta, ignaro di quanto sia offensivo il nomignolo “affettuoso” trovato per la moglie. Un libro sulla freddezza del cuore, l’amore, la gelosia, la sopraffazione, che si impone all’attenzione per la prosa particolare, scarna, eppure credibile per il lettore, poiché ben riflette la grossolanità di pensiero del narratore Paul, il cui discorso interiore inciampa nella propria rabbia e nell'incapacità di esprimere emozioni. Ne scaturisce una sintassi contorta, un linguaggio deformato, unitamente a passaggi di estrema poesia.

[Stewart Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off, let me join in the chorus of praise for the skilled translation of this book. This is a novel that seems almost impossibly rooted in language and dialect, and the fact that W. Donald Wilson was able to bring Revaz's work to the English-speaking world is nothing short of a miracle. If I ever take up French, I'll jump at the chance to read this one as it was originally written; until then, this expertly mangled prose is brilliant.

Next, it strikes me that I don't think I would have enjoyed this book if it had been written by a man. This is a story about masculinity, and it's so brutal in its (sexual, verbal, physical) violence that it could only have been written by a woman, otherwise it would risk coming across as a demented fantasy. It's not a story I was eager to continue: there was one scene in particular near the beginning that I could feel in my guilt, a scene that triggered a sort of primal disgust - something that hasn't really happened to me in a book since high school. (Hint: the scene involves spiders) It's such a horrifically sad story, and the narrator, Paul, is arguably the most despicable character whose headspace I've ever been forced to inhabit.

Except, is he? It doesn't feel fair to dismiss him as simply a cruel, abusive, raping pig - although he surely is all of those things. But Revaz's skill - her mastery, really - is in her decision to tease some sympathy out of her readers for this monster. His abuse seems almost to stem from a complete lack of awareness and reflection, and there's a deep layer of self-hatred and insecurity that penetrates through everything he says or does. There are moments where he acknowledges his love for his wife, but in the same breath dismisses his role in completely dehumanizing her. There are touching chapters about his love for animals, and when certain sentences and paragraphs near the end of the novel would bring me near tears, I had to remind myself that Paul wasn't worth crying for.

So in short, Revaz has written a book on masculinity that made me feel sick to my stomach. It's a novel that forces reflection, that wrings it from your neck in a chokehold. I'm glad to be putting it down.

[Julie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quand je vois les autres critiques sur ce roman, j'ai l'impression d'être passée à côté, mais plusieurs choses m'ont dérangée dans cette oeuvre. Tout d'abord, le style était indigeste pour moi. Je veux bien relever l'effort stylistique de l'autrice dans son entreprise de création d'un langage qui s'affranchit des règles de grammaire de base du français, et qui cherche à retranscrire le parler rustre des hommes de la terre, peu instruits, mais à la longue j'ai trouvé ça extrêmement pénible à lire. Plusieurs fois, j'ai peiné à comprendre le sens de certaines phrases, cherchant une logique qui, finalement, ne doit pas exister.
Ensuite, je me suis ennuyée. On comprend vite que la vie de Paul est monotone et tourne autour de peu de choses. Mais faut-il vraiment 274 pages pour le faire comprendre ?
Et enfin, j'ai trouvé le propos d'une rare violence. J'imagine pourtant que c'est la réalité de certaines personnes dans ce milieu, mais cette indifférence à l'autre qui partage sa vie m'a choquée au plus haut point. Je lis ce livre directement après "Sa préférée", de Sarah Jollien-Fardel, qui transpire lui aussi la violence de bout en bout, mais ce dernier avec ceci de délicat que la langue était subtile, presque poétique, alors que dans "Rapport aux bêtes", rien ne vient alléger cet insupportable sentiment que sa femme ferait mieux de s'en aller, purement et simplement. L'histoire est difficile à dater, elle pourrait se passer aussi bien dans les années 1950 que maintenant, même si aujourd'hui cela me semble à peine croyable que des gens endurent ça (je me rends bien compte que cette impression est évidemment fortement biaisée par mon milieu). Je n'ai pas vu le changement de regard, promis par la quatrième de couverture, et peut-être bien que l'attente de celui-ci m'a laissé encore davantage un goût amer au moment de refermer cet ouvrage.

[janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une vraie claque. La violence suinte à chaque détour de phrase (phrases magistrales d'ailleurs ; j'ai beaucoup d'affectation pour les écritures oralisantes même si c'est rarement bien fait mais là on est sur un cas d'exception) tout en restant écrasant d'intelligence, on ne tombe jamais dans l'abrutissement ni dans les personnages ni dans la narration parce qu'il y a toujours quelque chose derrière, une tendresse qu'on refuse à l'un mais qu'on prodigue à l'autre, et puis des vies entières qui se déroulent dès qu'on tourne le dos mais il y a les œillères qu'on pose intentionnellement, on n'est pas stupide on sait bien les choses simplement il n'y a pas le temps, parce qu'il faut s'occuper des bêtes.

[Freddie the Know-it-all · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paul's Acres

♫
Paul's Acres is the place to be
Farm livin' is the life for me
Land spreadin' out so far and wide
Keep Lus'tania, just give me that countryside

Lis-bon is where I'd rather stay
I get allergic smelling hay
I just adore a greenhouse view
Darling I love you but George wants a brimmer too

The chores, the stores
Fresh air, Town Square

You are my wife
Good bye city life
Paul's Acres we are there
♫

There is no ending ... er, I mean denouement. Paul Wendell Douglas and Vulva Douglas just carry on and Hilarity Ensues for six laugh-packed seasons of more zany antics.

[Inès Heinrichs · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai beaucoup apprécié l'histoire qui était très touchante. Le langage de Paul m'a glacé tout du long et m'a fait ressentir toute la violence de l'histoire comme aucun livre ne me l'a jamais fait ressentir. Le choix du narrateur et du langage était audacieux mais c'est ce qui fait la force du livre. La violence n'est pas entièrement dépeinte mais elle se devine sous les pensées brutes de Paul qui parfois tendent vers le comique. Je ne peux qu'en être bouleversée.

[P-E L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Une écriture fastidieuse, mais qui exprime si bien le caractère du personnage. Un personnage touchant, qu'on aimerait aimer mais que l'on n'arrive pas, jamais tout à fait. Un livre vraiment bien. J'ai eu beaucoup de plaisir à le lire.

[Conny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Die Sprache in Revaz‘ Debütroman „Von wegen den Tieren“ ist grob – aber auch passend und angenehm lesbar. Sie denkt sich in einen Bauern hinein, der nicht mit Menschen umzugehen weiss und seinen Tieren viel mehr Gefühle und Zärtlichkeit entgegenbringt als seiner Frau oder seinen Kindern, die durchaus auch mal „den Stock bekommen“. Aus einem Roman über das Landleben wird so vielmehr ein Roman über den Geschlechterkampf, schonungslos und direkt.

[Prisca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good to understand the role of women in family farming in Switzerland. Upsetting and scary

[Cléa Audeoud · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas passionnant mais pas horrible
(Point bonus parce que Noëlle Revaz est quand même super forte)

[Beau Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dark and troubling

[Bojan Ostojić · Rating 5 out of 5]

In-imi-ta-bleeeeeee!

[Dean Jamieson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great addition to one of my favorite genres, the unhinged male confessional.