Nulle Part

by Yasmina Reza

« Où est l'enfance ? Des jours écoulés et vécus, il devrait de temps en temps jaillir une image lumineuse, une fulgurante réminiscence.
Mais rien ne surgit. Rien ne triomphe du désir d'oubli. »

Genres: France, French Literature

Mass Market Paperback

First published September 1, 2005

About the author

Yasmina Reza began work as an actress, appearing in several new plays as well as in plays by Molière and Marivaux. In 1987 she wrote Conversations after a Burial, which won the Molière Award for Best Author. Following this, she translated Kafka's Metamorphosis for Roman Polanski and was nominated for a Molière Award for Best Translation. Her second play, Winter Crossing, won the 1990 Molière for Best Fringe Production, and her next play The Unexpected Man, enjoyed successful productions in England, France, Scandinavia, Germany and New York. In 1995, Art premiered in Paris and went on to win the Molière Award for Best Author. Since then it has been produced world-wide and translated into 20 languages. The London production received the 1996-97 Olivier Award and Evening Standard Award. Screenwriting credits include See You Tomorrow, starring Jeanne Moreau and directed by Didier Martiny. In September 1997, her first novel, Hammerklavier, was published.

Reviews

[leynes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread (December 2020):
I needed something short to read in the bathtub. I rarely take hot bubble baths (I'm really more the showering type of person) but when I do, I like to stay in there for hours and enjoy myself with a good book or movie. Nulle Part was one of my favorite books of 2018 and I loved rereading it two years later and finding new things in this incredibly short book (74 pages^^).

Nulle Part consists of a couple of fragments in which Yasmina Reza explores her role in motherhood, her own childhood and her sense of belonging (in the world, in her family, where she lives). It is hauntingly beautiful. I stand by what I said two years ago: not many people will enjoy this book. Most will find it mundane, nonsensical, not properly thought-through. But that's why I love it so much. Yasmina Reza manages to write about the most profane things, yet capture what is so essentially human in them.

Un jour, je ne pourrai plus tourner, ni t'avoir dans mes bras, bientôt tu seras trop loud, trop grand, et tu ne courras plus depuis des lointains pour te jeter dans mon cou, mes bras et mes baisers.

She has said that instead of having taken pictures of her children when they were little, she chose to take "written pictures", by writing down fragments and memories. Some of these, she shares in Nulle Part, and for me, it's always an incredibly intimate reading experience that allows me to reflect on my own childhood as well. Through a lot of the fragments, you can feel a sense of longing but also a sense of completion. She negotiates what it means to let go.

Où est l'enfance? Des jours écoulés et vécus, il devrait de temps en temps jaillir une image lumineuse, une fulgurante réminiscence.
Mais rien ne surgit. Rien ne triomphe du désir d'oubli.

However, this time around, I was surprised by the last section of this book because I remembered almost none of it. It is the section that is probably the most revealing when it comes to Reza as a person, as she negotiates her family's history and also her own place in the world. She shares her feeling of non-belonging, of not knowing where she came from (...and maybe also not of where to go). Reza comes from a big Jewish family that is scattered around the globe. Her father is Iranian, her mother Hungarian. She herself was born in France. Her grandparents are somewhere buried in the United States of America ["le mot natal n'existe pas, ni le mot exil"]. She feels lost. She hasn't grown up in any tongue. She didn't have any role models. She didn't know how to properly raise children. She didn't know anything about any tradition. She had nothing. Nowhere. Nulle Part.

Je n'ai pas des racines, aucun sol ne s'est fiché en moi.

There is a lot of trauma there. And not just on Reza's end. The trauma is transgenerational. But what is she supposed to do when no one wants to talk to her? Her mother wants to forget everything. Her father as well. So, Reza is forgetting as well. She is searching for answers, yet afraid of them. Nulle Part is her attempt at remembering, at conserving her life.

Original review (October 2018):
Yasmina Reza can do no wrong. I am obsessed with this woman. Six books deep into her body of work and I haven't discovered one bad apple, everything ranged from above average to absolutely fantastic. I literally turn into Lady Gaga when I talk about this woman.

I picked up Nulle Part at Gibert Jeune in Paris. I had no idea what it was about but since it was only 2€ I had to take it with me. Let me just briefly praise Gibert Jeune. It's a wonderful French bookshop situated at the crossroads at St Michel. It houses five floors full of books at an affordable price. I was absolutely shooketh when I discovered their paperback and comic book sections. A bibliophile's heaven, let me tell you that.

But back to Reza: Nulle Part turned out to be a small piece of nonfictional writing, I would call it an attempt at a short memoir, maybe even something that wasn't meant to be published, something that Yasmina wrote down for herself and then it ended up in the printing press. I, for my part, am very happy that it did.

I don't know if what I'm about to say makes sense but for me, there are loud books and then there are quiet books. Yasmina Reza manages to write both. When I think back on the phenomenal Le Dieu du Carnage, I can attest without a doubt that it is a loud book. The characters are angry, furious, screaming, there's so much drama and so much going on, your head will spin whilst reading it. And you yourself, as a reader, will be loud as well, because you cannot hold in your laughter, you have to laugh out loud, that's how cynical Reza's social commentary is. So Carnage is a loud book, a loud five fucking stars.

But then, I was also fortunate enough to stumble upon some of Yasmina's more quiet work, Heureux les Heureux and Nulle Part immediately come to mind. These snippets, taken from daily life (in the first case they were fictionalised, but in the latter they were left as they were), manage to speak volumes without saying much. Yasmina manages to convey a certain atmosphere, a specific feeling. She is a writer who has mastered the art of showing the human condition. When I read her words, I feel her presence, her sadness, her confusion. They somehow become mine.

Nulle Part, for example, is a reflection on motherhood. Yasmina Reza looks back on how she brought up her children and how she herself was brought up. These are, usually, not topics with which I can identity myself very easily. I don't know what it's like to have children, I never felt what a mother felt when she realised that her children were growing up and becoming more and more independent. Yasmina allows me in on those emotions, and I love her for that.

Et c'est un soulagement que tu disparaisses, car jamais sinon je ne quitterais la fenêtre, je serais toujours là, chose restante, à agiter ma main, jusqu'à ce que tu sois un point.

Nulle Part is an incredibly short piece, only 74 pages in my edition. We don't get a thorough analysis or anything like that. Instead, we get little vignettes. Yasmina standing at the window and waving her daughter goodbye on the first day she was allowed to go to school alone. Yasmina refusing to play a game with her son because she's too busy with work. Yasmina going shopping with a friend of hers. Yasmina realising how much she herself has forgotten of her own childhood.

Le chagrin est très près de la joie. Dans ce jardin public où mes parents sont apparus pour venir me chercher, eux qui ne venaient jamais me chercher nulle part, j'ai couru vers eux avec une telle joie, et cette disproportion de la joie était aussi un chagrin.

Reading the above words actually made me cry. I don't think a lot of people will enjoy a narrative like these, most people will probably find it too short, too meaningless, too ordinary. I fucking loved it. I'm still at a loss for words at how accurately Reza can put certain emotions into words, make them come alive on the page.

[Natalia Kaulanjan · Rating 2 out of 5]

J’aime bien la façon dont le quotidien, parfois vu comme banal, devient presque poétique quand on prête attention aux détails et que l’on vit dans le présent. Ceci dit, certains passages m’échappent, je vais sûrement relire le livre et je serai en mesure, à ce moment, de faire une autre évaluation.

[Hans Castorp · Rating 1 out of 5]

delicado mas no suficientemente profundo

[SergioEavesDropping · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mdrrrrrr hahahahahahaha

« Un Uno (mais je m’ennuie), un Mikado (mais ça m’énerve), un Master Mind (j’ai honte de t’avoir pour fils) (…) »

[Ernesto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Precioso libro de miscelánea. Un estilo trabajado y percutivo, cada uno de los fragmentos que podrían ser hasta narrativas breves o escenas se presenta con gran precisión.

Toda madre/padre o hijo debería de leer los primeros tres fragmentos. La nostalgia son las raíces que tejen este viaje, nos invitan a añorar recuerdos de alguien más que parecen propios. Esos son los recuerdos más duros de soltar.

[Charlotte Peyrot · Rating 4 out of 5]

"[...]j’ai couru vers eux avec une telle joie, et cette disproportion de la joie était aussi un chagrin. Le chagrin est très près de la joie."

[Ekaterina T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short novel about childhood, motherhood, feeling of belonging. Nice language, short, intimate read.

[romanouchka · Rating 5 out of 5]

l'émotion dans la sincérité

[saad · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my favorite reads from this year, it’s amazing, sad, touching. i related to the last part of the book so much. it’s just so good.

[Gianluca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ricordi, nostalgie, riflessioni intorno all'infanzia e alla radici familiari, intorno all'essere genitori e all'avere una famiglia. Nessuna trama, poche vette di lirismo, ma è sempre Reza.

[Caroline Segal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Très beau texte sur le temps qui passe, sur l'attachement à nos enfants

[Along the Seine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Short, deep, wonderful.
Have to reread it because my head is dizzy with thoughts and meanings behind the sentences I have just read.

****
Comment ne pas écrire une critique qui est plus longue que le livre lui-même ?

"Nulle part" est un texte bien court que Yasmina Reza avoue avoir écrit pour ses enfants.
On y trouve de la tendresse, de l'amour, de la nostalgie, le regard curieux d'une mère sur deux êtres qui s'émancipent de sous ses ailes.

Enfin, il y a les parents de Yasmina et sa propre enfance. Deux éléments inévitables qui, tôt ou tard, refont surface dans l'esprit de tous les parents.

Nulle part, c'est tout le passé, la terre d'origine où se trouvent les cendres de ses ancêtres. Nulle part c'est là où tout commence. Le lieu d'où l'on vient.
Il s'agit des ancetres et de leur passé qui n'etaient pas presents dans la vie de Yasmina Reza (YR est la fille d'immigrants, de Juifs survivants de l'Holocauste).

Nulle part. Cela n'a aucune importance. Des racines, des liens avec le passé ? Non, merci. J'en veux pas. Reza semble dire aux lecteurs.

[Thomas Rau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably not my kind of book. I enjoyed it more than I'd expected, but I wonder if it will have any lasting effects, if I will remember much of it. The very loosely connected entries read like some blog postings.

[Alain · Rating 3 out of 5]

tres jolis textes, ciseles

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

touching, but infinitely depressing (I really enjoyed the second part though).