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Bruits
"Bruits". Un livre fou, terriblement humain : un jour, une ville, minute par minute ; une horloge romanesque qui suit les parcours d’êtres plus ou moins cabossés par la vie. Un flic, des éboueurs, une caissière, un étudiant, des voyous, un médecin, une femme dans le coma, une chatte, une star, etc., mais surtout une fillette en manteau rouge qui a fui son foyer et traverse la ville et qui, ce faisant, apprend à devenir femme en une journée. Son errance s’inscrit dans une vaste agitation humaine restituée au prisme des bruits, de cette rumeur loquace dont est fait le quotidien d’une ville.
Après le Berlin de Döblin ou le Dublin de Joyce, la cité imaginée par Anne Savelli nous propulse au sein d’une humanité prise entre cris et chuchotements. Des êtres fuient, se croisent, s’esquivent, et leurs pensées font de même, êtres et pensées embarqués dans une incroyable symphonie où le son fait sens, où chaque bruit participe de la grande révolution terrestre. Le monde comme une marelle un peu folle, régi par un inexorable tic- tac, celui du Temps autant que celui du cœur.
Après le Berlin de Döblin ou le Dublin de Joyce, la cité imaginée par Anne Savelli nous propulse au sein d’une humanité prise entre cris et chuchotements. Des êtres fuient, se croisent, s’esquivent, et leurs pensées font de même, êtres et pensées embarqués dans une incroyable symphonie où le son fait sens, où chaque bruit participe de la grande révolution terrestre. Le monde comme une marelle un peu folle, régi par un inexorable tic- tac, celui du Temps autant que celui du cœur.
370 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 7, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 29, 2026
I can NOT resist a gimmick, which can be a problem when authors sometimes come up with genius ideas that they can’t deliver on. Here, however, the author’s two-decade writing process ensured that the germ of this idea could successfully sprout.
The book is a sort of Ulysses-esque catalog of a single day in an unnamed city, following a mysterious, parentless five-year-old girl both from close up and far away. This temporal, spatial, and auditory journey is time-stamped by the minute, starting at 6 a.m., but not every minute is in the same day or even year. Our comatose narrator speaks to this girl, known as F (for fille) as she wakes up to yet another police raid in the projects where she lives in a squatted unit with a stream of unconcerned strangers, and continues to speak to her as she takes flight through the city, slowly growing up throughout the “day”.
The wicked street smarts of our little heroine come up against a barrage of sounds (as the name, of course, tells us) that enact a sort of violence on both her and the rest of the community. F is not this novel’s sole focus, however. Over 150 characters populate the pages of this book, from nesting crows to dealers, an A-lister, and the narrator’s doctor.
If you were to count up all the sounds found within this book, the number might even be in the thousands. It’s overwhelming, but that’s the point. Sound can often be a form of invisible violence, as the author has stated. Its victims are disproportionately poor and working class, people who end up alienated from the very “community” that relentlessly pursues them in the form of sound pollution.
Setting aside its biting social critique, the literary merit of Bruits is more than enough to make the reading experience gratifying. Savelli breaks style rules left and right, and jumps between minutes and characters and settings are dizzying, but with a bit of time the story starts to feel lived in. It was immensely rewarding to reach the end of the journey feeling smarter, without sacrificing entertainment.
The book is a sort of Ulysses-esque catalog of a single day in an unnamed city, following a mysterious, parentless five-year-old girl both from close up and far away. This temporal, spatial, and auditory journey is time-stamped by the minute, starting at 6 a.m., but not every minute is in the same day or even year. Our comatose narrator speaks to this girl, known as F (for fille) as she wakes up to yet another police raid in the projects where she lives in a squatted unit with a stream of unconcerned strangers, and continues to speak to her as she takes flight through the city, slowly growing up throughout the “day”.
The wicked street smarts of our little heroine come up against a barrage of sounds (as the name, of course, tells us) that enact a sort of violence on both her and the rest of the community. F is not this novel’s sole focus, however. Over 150 characters populate the pages of this book, from nesting crows to dealers, an A-lister, and the narrator’s doctor.
If you were to count up all the sounds found within this book, the number might even be in the thousands. It’s overwhelming, but that’s the point. Sound can often be a form of invisible violence, as the author has stated. Its victims are disproportionately poor and working class, people who end up alienated from the very “community” that relentlessly pursues them in the form of sound pollution.
Setting aside its biting social critique, the literary merit of Bruits is more than enough to make the reading experience gratifying. Savelli breaks style rules left and right, and jumps between minutes and characters and settings are dizzying, but with a bit of time the story starts to feel lived in. It was immensely rewarding to reach the end of the journey feeling smarter, without sacrificing entertainment.
February 19, 2026
dommage que j'ai dû arrêter la lecture à cause de ''la confusion des bruits ''. beaucoup trop de bruits se confondent pour une lecture intelligible.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews