Histoires de bouches

by Noëlle Châtelet

Une vieille dame qui rate sa blanquette, un haricot qui germe dans le nez d'une fillette, un bébé qui tète sa chienne, une femme qui refuse de manger, une autre qui se fait ogresse, un cannibale malgré lui... Autant de récits inspirés de faits réels, où la nourriture est prétexte à dévoiler ce qui se cache en chacun de nous, où la nourriture devient langage. Comiques, tragiques, tragi-comiques, il y en a pour tous les goûts, y compris pour les gourmands de littérature.

Genres: France

186 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published October 1, 1986

About the author

Noëlle Châtelet won her PhD at Paris 8 University with thesis in sociology titled 'The Culinary Melee: Images and Institutions' about psychosocial and cultural aspects of eating disorders in young women.

She was director of the French Institute of Florence, Italy, from 1989 to 1991, and since 2003 is the vice-president of the Society of Men of Letters of France.

She also participated as an actress in numerous works for television and film until 1987.

She is the widow of the philosopher François Châtelet. She is the sister of Lionel Jospin. She is the author of essays, collections of short stories and novels translated into several languages.

Reviews

[Frumenty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here are 18 short stories around the theme of food. I am a comparative newcomer to the French language, and I found these stories linguistically a little more challenging than other books I have read. With their difficulty, and the fact that I've been reading so many other things, this book has been left unread for long spells and my memory of the first stories is a little hazy. However, I found some of them very satisfying, once I had finished a story and mulled it over for a while.

Some are stories with a sting in the tail. You don't know where it is leading you till you get there. The first story, La blanquette de l'ancienne, is such a story. It made me gasp (figuratively speaking), and sent me straight back to the beginning of the story to pick up any threads I might have missed and get a proper overview of the story. It was at this point that I thought, "These stories may turn out to be something quite special." Some of the other stories affected me the same way, including the last two: Yena, and La mère nourricière.

Part of my difficulty in reading the stories was the challenge of getting my bearings quickly in each new story. The times and locations are so varied: Peru in 1939, a French hospital in 1857, a French boarding school in the 1950s(?), a swanky Paris «salon de thé» in the latter half of the 20th century, a garden in Morocco in colonial times. There is even a story told from the point of view of a blue-bottle fly in a garden.

This book won the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle 1987. It is definitely prize material. A quick look at fr.wikipédia.org tells me that Noëlle Châtelet has distinguished herself in a number of fields, but her output of fiction is quite limited. She has published works about the Marquis de Sade, and a thesis about aesthetics, Corps à corps culinaire, a title that suggests that it might provide informative reading for anyone wishing to better understand this little book of short stories.

[Célia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ce qui n’était à l’origine qu’un livre de cours est devenu une de mes meilleures lectures de l’année.
Le style est absolument magnifique. Je ne suis pas forcément fan du thème principal qui sert de fil rouge, mais ça a été si bien traité, et de façon si variée.
Mention spéciale pour la dernière nouvelle que j’ai relue 5 fois de suite.

[Ncioals · Rating 3 out of 5]

inégal, mais plein de bonnes surprises