Faux nègres

by Thierry Beinstingel

Lors de la dernière présidentielle, c’est dans un petit village de l’est de la France qu’un parti d’extrême droite réalise son meilleur score. Des journalistes sont dépêchés pour se pencher sur le phénomène. Parmi eux, de retour en France après avoir passé vingt ans au Moyen-Orient, coupé du pays natal depuis trop longtemps pour manier un discours de circonstance, Pierre arrive sur les lieux. Accompagné d’un preneur de son aveugle, hébergé dans un gîte rural, il écoute les habitants éluder ses questions, parler d’invasions qu’ils n’ont pas subies ou évoquer une pierre préhistorique enfouie sous les fondations de l’église. Chacun réinvente une histoire différente, mais les protagonistes ignorent encore qu’un drame va les réunir.
Mêlant narration romanesque et langage collectif, Faux nègres confronte notre histoire avec l’actualité la plus récente.

Un Beinstingel laconique, dont la plume subtile fait merveille. Jérôme Dupuis, L’Express.

384 pages, Pocket Book

First published August 20, 2014

Reviews

[Moushine Zahr · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is difficult to rate a book only one star despite the effort an author made writing his book, but I found nothing in this book interesting or worth reading. The author, unfortunately, used a Romanesque, distant, and collective writing style that made it impossible for me, as a reader, to relate to the characters, primary and secondary, and to the story. In fact, there was no real story to read as one event (a communal election) happened prior to the beginning of the book and the second event (a deadly road accident), which occurred in the second half of the book was not even described. The author used this particular writing style to describe at length a small rural declining anonymous village somewhere in France, which gave the highest voting score to he extreme right wing party in the last communal party, the people living in that village, and the history of the village. The author kept writing back and forth within the same chapter and without any correlation or logic between the present time of the village, the reporter's past life, and the story of Arthur Rimbaud who was born and raised supposedly in that village during the 19th century.

I was bored reading this book from the beginning til the end because there is no story to read about the characters and the village and no depth into the characters. If you have to read one of the novels written by French author Thierry Beinstingel, I suggest you to read any of his other books such as "Ils désertent!", which I read, liked, and reviewed in 2016.