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Quatre murs
Quatre Murs. La maison familiale est trop vaste pour une femme seule. En ce jour de déménagement, les quatre enfants, devenus adultes, s'y retrouvent pour la dernière fois. Leur père est mort. Dans les pièces vides qui résonnent, les propos en apparence anodins se chargent de sous-entendus. Ces quatre-là se connaissent trop pour donner le change, d'autant que leur mère, profitant qu'ils soient pour une fois ensemble sans enfants ni conjoints, soulève la question de l'héritage. Deux ans plus tard, rien n'est résolu : les frères et soeurs ne se parlent plus guère, et surtout pas de leur passé. Sur l'insistance de leur mère, ils ont pourtant accepté de se retrouver en Grèce, le pays de leur origine, dans la maison où l'aîné vient de s'installer. Ce voyage est, pour chacun d'eux, l'occasion de revenir sur l'ambivalence de leurs relations. Comment en sont-ils arrivés là, eux qui étaient tout les uns pour les autres ? Excellant à pointer la dissonance dans les voix de ses quatre protagonistes, qui chacun livre sa version des faits, Kéthévane Davrichewy, comme si elle assemblait les pièces d'un puzzle, révèle petit à petit les motifs d'un drame familial, et propose une belle variation sur la perte de l'innocence.
180 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2014
11 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 26, 2016
Ce roman intimiste est particulièrement troublant et envoûtant. Il délivre, avec une rare sobriété et une économie de mots, des émotions fortes et poignantes sur les liens du sang et le rôle de la famille. Malgré les rancœurs et les propos caustiques, l'ensemble n'en reste pas moins un quasi chuchotement sur une petite centaine de pages racontant une histoire tout en clair-obscur, jamais trop cynique, ni mielleuse. Elle se dresse tel un funambule sur le fil du rasoir et jongle avec les vérités des uns et des autres, bousculant les certitudes et les idéaux, mais sans forcément provoquer de remous. La lecture se termine d'ailleurs sur un épilogue lumineux et dansant. Une fin rayonnante pour une lecture empreinte d'une grande sensibilité.
« Il me semble que la famille peut nous rendre plus forts mais aussi nous affaiblir. »
« Il me semble que la famille peut nous rendre plus forts mais aussi nous affaiblir. »
April 30, 2019
As is often the case, although very close as children, four siblings have drifted apart into adult life. All they seem to have in common is a tendency to be troubled, even neurotic, perhaps owing to past repressed events which are gradually revealed.
In the prologue, they are brought together physically by the final visit to the childhood home which their widowed mother has decided to sell. This inevitably triggers nostalgic memories, but tension is aroused by the mother’s wish to give some of their inheritance in advance to her two younger and less successful children, the twins Elias and Rena.
The “four walls” of the title seem like a metaphor for the four adult siblings who need to decide whether they want to rebuild their relationships to prevent their family group from crumbling, once it has lost the “anchor” of the family home. To do this, they have to understand their relationships in the first place, which is hard in view of all the unspoken resentments, real or imagined guilt of the past.
A reunion with their mother two years later at the Greek holiday home purchased by elder son Saul creates a situation in which the four can reflect on the past, perhaps make a few confessions and ultimately begin to rebond. The author uses the device of taking a different view point in each chapter: that of Saul, the “intellectual”, successful but troubled former journalist; then Hélène, the internationally known creator of perfumes who has perhaps erected a false screen of not wanting either children or a man in her life; Elias, who has not achieved his potential as a pianist and is separated from his wife, and Rena who has suffered a crippling accident, leaving her dependent on a crutch, perhaps another metaphor for emotional clinging to others.
Is perception of the past changed by the passage of time, or does each individual see it in his or her own way? Memories take root differently, with hate linking us as much as love. Do only children, like their parents, make a fantasy out of having a large family, thus creating a heavy burden for their own brood of children? People worry how their children will turn out, what they can do to avoid mistakes in their upbringing, all the while finding it hard to see themselves as parents. Such are the observations produced by the characters’ continual navel-gazing.
There are some strong dialogues (sometimes hard to keep track of who is speaking), leading me to wonder if this might have worked better as a film which could also have captured visually the ambience of the childhood house, or Saul’s Greek retreat. Critics have noted the subtlety and “non-dits”, unspoken words, of this novella, so perhaps I missed some of the revelations. For me, these proved too fragmented, the details sometimes hard to follow, except when delivered in a melodramatic outburst. One could argue that the real drama lies in the reader’s freedom to speculate over what may really lie behind all the obscure hints and allusions. For instance, do incestuous feelings lie at the root of a character’s malaise? Can it be hard for the siblings in general really to love anyone outside the charmed circle of their childhood bonds, now broken without being fully satisfied by anyone else?
The French author may have been inspired by her Georgian heritage to create a family with parents who were originally Greek immigrants, one of Jewish extraction, but it was unclear to me how being immigrants influenced the essential exploration of family ties, except that feeling a little rootless may have encouraged the mother to foster excessively tight bonds between her children.
A potentially promising novella left me rather bored and disappointed with its underdeveloped characters, thin plot, and somewhat tame conclusion.
In the prologue, they are brought together physically by the final visit to the childhood home which their widowed mother has decided to sell. This inevitably triggers nostalgic memories, but tension is aroused by the mother’s wish to give some of their inheritance in advance to her two younger and less successful children, the twins Elias and Rena.
The “four walls” of the title seem like a metaphor for the four adult siblings who need to decide whether they want to rebuild their relationships to prevent their family group from crumbling, once it has lost the “anchor” of the family home. To do this, they have to understand their relationships in the first place, which is hard in view of all the unspoken resentments, real or imagined guilt of the past.
A reunion with their mother two years later at the Greek holiday home purchased by elder son Saul creates a situation in which the four can reflect on the past, perhaps make a few confessions and ultimately begin to rebond. The author uses the device of taking a different view point in each chapter: that of Saul, the “intellectual”, successful but troubled former journalist; then Hélène, the internationally known creator of perfumes who has perhaps erected a false screen of not wanting either children or a man in her life; Elias, who has not achieved his potential as a pianist and is separated from his wife, and Rena who has suffered a crippling accident, leaving her dependent on a crutch, perhaps another metaphor for emotional clinging to others.
Is perception of the past changed by the passage of time, or does each individual see it in his or her own way? Memories take root differently, with hate linking us as much as love. Do only children, like their parents, make a fantasy out of having a large family, thus creating a heavy burden for their own brood of children? People worry how their children will turn out, what they can do to avoid mistakes in their upbringing, all the while finding it hard to see themselves as parents. Such are the observations produced by the characters’ continual navel-gazing.
There are some strong dialogues (sometimes hard to keep track of who is speaking), leading me to wonder if this might have worked better as a film which could also have captured visually the ambience of the childhood house, or Saul’s Greek retreat. Critics have noted the subtlety and “non-dits”, unspoken words, of this novella, so perhaps I missed some of the revelations. For me, these proved too fragmented, the details sometimes hard to follow, except when delivered in a melodramatic outburst. One could argue that the real drama lies in the reader’s freedom to speculate over what may really lie behind all the obscure hints and allusions. For instance, do incestuous feelings lie at the root of a character’s malaise? Can it be hard for the siblings in general really to love anyone outside the charmed circle of their childhood bonds, now broken without being fully satisfied by anyone else?
The French author may have been inspired by her Georgian heritage to create a family with parents who were originally Greek immigrants, one of Jewish extraction, but it was unclear to me how being immigrants influenced the essential exploration of family ties, except that feeling a little rootless may have encouraged the mother to foster excessively tight bonds between her children.
A potentially promising novella left me rather bored and disappointed with its underdeveloped characters, thin plot, and somewhat tame conclusion.
May 29, 2015
Quatre enfants: Saul, Helena, Elias et Rena. La mort d’un père. La vente de la maison familale comme point de convergence, comme un nouveau départ. Qu’est ce qui compose ce lien filial? Comment le faire exister et comment grandir ensemble , comment se construire, devenir soi sans copier, vouloir égaler ou sans jalousie?
La force des sentiments est accentuée par le choix du schéma narratif, porté par une écriture fine et brillante. Un roman choral (sans conteste, mon style de roman préféré!!)mais pas que. A chaque narrateur, sa façon de conter: séance psy, dialogue, narrateur omniscient. A chaque fois, le lecteur est pris à parti frontalement, sans avoir besoin de s’identifier aux personnages tant l’auteur parvient à donner au lecteur une place à part entière. On ne lit pas l’histoire, on la vit. et quel est le secret qui les a eloigne? (accident de voiture qui a handicape Rena et ou sa soeur conduisait
La force des sentiments est accentuée par le choix du schéma narratif, porté par une écriture fine et brillante. Un roman choral (sans conteste, mon style de roman préféré!!)mais pas que. A chaque narrateur, sa façon de conter: séance psy, dialogue, narrateur omniscient. A chaque fois, le lecteur est pris à parti frontalement, sans avoir besoin de s’identifier aux personnages tant l’auteur parvient à donner au lecteur une place à part entière. On ne lit pas l’histoire, on la vit. et quel est le secret qui les a eloigne? (accident de voiture qui a handicape Rena et ou sa soeur conduisait
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 21, 2021
griechische Einwanderer in Frankreich. Geschwisterliebe - Gefangensein, gemeinsame Kindheit, Verlust der Unschuld. Treffende Bilder, ausgewalzte Psychologie, redundant, viel Gegrübel, handlungsarm.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews