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Vivonne
Alors qu'un typhon dévaste l'Île-de-France, l'éditeur Alexandre Garnier contemple le cataclysme meurtrier depuis son bureau, rue de l'Odéon : une rivière de boue coule sous ses fenêtres, des rats surgissent des égouts. Le passé aussi remonte à la surface. Devant ce spectacle de fin du monde, Garnier se souvient de sa jeunesse et surtout de son ami, le poète Adrien Vivonne, auteur entre autres de Danser dans les ruines en évitant les balles. Garnier a publié ses livres avant que celui-ci ne disparaisse mystérieusement en 2008, il y a presque vingt ans. Qu'est devenu Vivonne ?
Partout en Europe, la « balkanisation climatique » sévit et les milices s'affrontent tandis que la multiplication des cyberattaques fait craindre une Grande Panne. Lancé à la poursuite de Vivonne, Garnier essaie de le retrouver avant que tout ne s'effondre. Est-il possible, comme semblent le croire de plus en plus de lecteurs dans le chaos ambiant, que Vivonne ait trouvé un passage vers un monde plus apaisé et que la solution soit au cœur de ses poèmes ?
Partout en Europe, la « balkanisation climatique » sévit et les milices s'affrontent tandis que la multiplication des cyberattaques fait craindre une Grande Panne. Lancé à la poursuite de Vivonne, Garnier essaie de le retrouver avant que tout ne s'effondre. Est-il possible, comme semblent le croire de plus en plus de lecteurs dans le chaos ambiant, que Vivonne ait trouvé un passage vers un monde plus apaisé et que la solution soit au cœur de ses poèmes ?
- GenresScience Fiction
412 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2021
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63 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 2, 2023
Trois étoiles et demie.
Ce que ce livre propose est intéressant : Vivonne est le nom d'un poète et le roman est écrit à partir de trois points de vue différents : son éditeur, son ex-amante et sa fille non reconnue. Dans une France d'un avenir proche chaotique, qui a connu une "libanisation climatique", c'est-à-dire un état de confrontations permanentes de guérilla et de désastres climatiques continus; la poésie est-elle la seule issue ?
Ce que ce livre propose est intéressant : Vivonne est le nom d'un poète et le roman est écrit à partir de trois points de vue différents : son éditeur, son ex-amante et sa fille non reconnue. Dans une France d'un avenir proche chaotique, qui a connu une "libanisation climatique", c'est-à-dire un état de confrontations permanentes de guérilla et de désastres climatiques continus; la poésie est-elle la seule issue ?
April 23, 2024
J'ai vraiment adoré la plume de Leroy, il m'a vraiment embarqué, peut être même un peu trop puisque je m'étais convaincu que Vivonne existait vraiment. Mon cœur est brisé de voir que non, mais ça montre à quel point il a su me convaincre.
J'ai trouvé ça hyper intéressant que la fiction soit basée sur la réalité : la montée du capitalisme et de l'extrême droite. Je trouve ça "sympa"( on s'entend sur le terme) de montrer la possible d'échéance d'un monde où ils deviendraient le pouvoir.
En bref j'ai adoré la plume, la portée politique, l'histoire et les personnages auxquels j'ai finis par m'attacher (même à Alexandre l'éditeur alors qu'il était détestable)
J'ai trouvé ça hyper intéressant que la fiction soit basée sur la réalité : la montée du capitalisme et de l'extrême droite. Je trouve ça "sympa"( on s'entend sur le terme) de montrer la possible d'échéance d'un monde où ils deviendraient le pouvoir.
En bref j'ai adoré la plume, la portée politique, l'histoire et les personnages auxquels j'ai finis par m'attacher (même à Alexandre l'éditeur alors qu'il était détestable)
February 12, 2024
Un nombrilisme soporifique qui décrit l’apocalypse du point de vue d’un parisien privilégié.
December 30, 2023
La poésie peut elle sauver le monde ? C'est le sujet de ce roman mettant en scène un éditeur parisien pendant une crise climatique arrivant au milieu d'un épisode de décomposition politique avancée: la France s'est littéralement décomposée sur pied, et des milices rôdent à travers tout le territoire.
C'est très mauvais. Le personnage principal est à mon sens l'archétype du personnage de roman germanopratin moderne, vieux, déplaisant, sans aucune espèce de but dans la vie, aux réflexions sur les femmes dignes d'un Depardieu, parisien, prétentieux, évidemment d'origine normande, bref, détestable.
La thèse du roman est une espèce de fugue fantasmatique dans la poésie quand le monde change, et n'en fait pas à mon avis un roman de science fiction digne, pas plus que ce ridicule effondrement civilisationnel.
Et puis c'est long, et écrit par quelqu'un qui veut faire des phrases et parler de poésie sans écrire le moindre vers. Je trouve ça aussi triste que le personnage principal.
En guise de conclusion, je dirai que c'est un roman écrit par quelqu'un qui n'a aucune culture de l'imaginaire récent, et qui pense, parce qu'il est un auteur installé, qu'il est capable de faire aussi bien qu'un auteur débutant, mais autant réfléchi à son sujet.
C'est très mauvais. Le personnage principal est à mon sens l'archétype du personnage de roman germanopratin moderne, vieux, déplaisant, sans aucune espèce de but dans la vie, aux réflexions sur les femmes dignes d'un Depardieu, parisien, prétentieux, évidemment d'origine normande, bref, détestable.
La thèse du roman est une espèce de fugue fantasmatique dans la poésie quand le monde change, et n'en fait pas à mon avis un roman de science fiction digne, pas plus que ce ridicule effondrement civilisationnel.
Et puis c'est long, et écrit par quelqu'un qui veut faire des phrases et parler de poésie sans écrire le moindre vers. Je trouve ça aussi triste que le personnage principal.
En guise de conclusion, je dirai que c'est un roman écrit par quelqu'un qui n'a aucune culture de l'imaginaire récent, et qui pense, parce qu'il est un auteur installé, qu'il est capable de faire aussi bien qu'un auteur débutant, mais autant réfléchi à son sujet.
September 5, 2025
2.5 for the beautiful descriptions of places and time and for making me think. Unfortunately, I found this book endlessly frustrating to read. The story is fine and the points of view are competently interwoven, but I remain thoroughly unconvinced of the main themes and messages.
The story contrasts a collapsing modern world driven by by climate change and technological dependency with a utopia of harmonic relationships with nature under the illumination of poetry. Our narrators take turns to talk about their relationship with the Poet, whose work allows readers to experience the eternity of time and pass into other, better worlds.
I've written before that I have grown suspicious of dystopias after my dystopia-loving teens. Too often I find them saying more about the politics and opinions of the author instead of our own world. This one, with its simplistic collapse, its caricatural factions and rejection of all the good the internet has brought us, is no different. Similarly, the vaguely presented utopia of Softness, freed of modern technology and in communion with nature, seems to forget that in nature the people who can't keep up are left behind, and with little mercy. These descriptions always conveniently elude important things, like human health without antibiotics and increased mother and children mortality (though the author may say that the passing makes those things unnecessary, we will come back to this later).
Our main narrator, a rather unsympathetic editor who was deeply jealous of the Poet as his old friend, tries to collect all the disparate pieces that tell the story of the Poet's life before it is too late. Thus the book is mainly about the life of Adrien Vivonne (the Poet) and how it intertwined with his poetry. We could go as far as to call it a hagiography and I'm very dubious about the idealization of mortal men of our time, and Adrien in particular.
Adrien Vivonne is undoubtedly charismatic, a talented poet with a supernatural ability to transport through his works. Although he never gets recognition as an active writer, his readers increase during the collapse, finding in his texts another, better reality. He is optimistic and innocent, he never has anything bad to say about anyone and he finds happiness in the little things in nature and in literature. His perception of time as cyclical and eternal protects him from the tragedies of his childhood. A dreamer, he spends a large part of his life wandering around the French back-country, living in tiny villages and traveling along small roads and train routes.
It's an ideal life, simple, free, light, and easy. Indeed it is very easy to be Andrien Vivonne, traveling around where his feet take him living in simplicity and writing poetry. His charms make it especially easy to captivate women; the ones whose story we hear fall for him at the very first moment. And after he spends weeks, months, years with them, he abandons them without as much as a warning, sometimes not even a word. Thankfully, his partners no matter how heartbroken always forgive him, it's how he is after all, his particular quality of life, what makes him Adrien. How easy indeed*.
Adrien sees the passage of time as cyclical and eternal, and so when tragedies happen in his family he is not struck by grief. Now again the author acknowledges this is a character fault, but he is quick to justify it by the special way of being that Adrien has. And yet Adrien is shown to grieve the little things denoting the passing of time. His family's suffering never seems to enter the equation. I wish we could have seen Adrien's own thoughts, see him struggle. See the hard parts of his life. For me it's hard to accept a person like this as a saint, someone who can see family members go and leave loved ones behind without struggle or suffering. Difficult experiences are an important part of growing and understanding people around us because we are humans and unfortunately these experiences are part of our life. I can't help but give more credit to someone who faced deep sadness and managed to get out than someone who was born to be forever happy. As it is, Adrien's main struggle is not getting recognition as a poet. And though this is an understandable pain, it is not quite enough for me.
In a way I can relate to our main narrator. His feelings towards Adrien are cast as callous and his actions are definitely reprehensible. Yet it’s hard to fault his feelings towards a friend who seemed to be better at anything that mattered (getting girls, writing, learning effortlessly). For having witnessed a friend group torn apart by envy, there are things that cannot be helped, especially when there is no communication. Of course we can blame him for not walking away in time.
Aside from the Poet himself, it is the philosophy itself that I am somewhat ambivalent about. Our main narrator, a privileged member of the upper class, speaks condescendingly about all his political activity as a young and older person, how it was ultimately pointless and ended up facilitating the rise of the extreme government. Then we have Adrien whose philosophy of life is the eternity of time, how there are infinite worlds out there and that poetry will help us transport to them. Isn’t this a bit like telling us that struggling to make this world better right now is unnecessary because there is something better ahead, a second coming of paradise? Of course this is not what the author means, but his utopic way of living is so vaguely described that it’s hard to see as anything more than a wishful dream.
Leaving aside the main criticisms of the book, there a couple of other issues that increased my frustration. Our main narrator is overly content to give us a description of women’s appearance and breasts, sometimes kindly informing us if he ever thought of sleeping with them. He is not the only one, which makes me suspect it is not simply a character affectation. There is ample idealization of Greece and the Greeks, who somehow manage to prove on average more virtuous in the collapsing world than elsewhere. Color me unimpressed. The escapades of Adrien in the Aegean Islands personally made me think of the romanticized point of view of a tourist (no mention of what happens when the touristic industry that is the lifeblood of many such places collapses).
Overall, I appreciate the book for making me think, but I see it as an expression of many attitudes I am at odds with. I would have DNFed it if it was not a gift.
*
The story contrasts a collapsing modern world driven by by climate change and technological dependency with a utopia of harmonic relationships with nature under the illumination of poetry. Our narrators take turns to talk about their relationship with the Poet, whose work allows readers to experience the eternity of time and pass into other, better worlds.
I've written before that I have grown suspicious of dystopias after my dystopia-loving teens. Too often I find them saying more about the politics and opinions of the author instead of our own world. This one, with its simplistic collapse, its caricatural factions and rejection of all the good the internet has brought us, is no different. Similarly, the vaguely presented utopia of Softness, freed of modern technology and in communion with nature, seems to forget that in nature the people who can't keep up are left behind, and with little mercy. These descriptions always conveniently elude important things, like human health without antibiotics and increased mother and children mortality (though the author may say that the passing makes those things unnecessary, we will come back to this later).
Our main narrator, a rather unsympathetic editor who was deeply jealous of the Poet as his old friend, tries to collect all the disparate pieces that tell the story of the Poet's life before it is too late. Thus the book is mainly about the life of Adrien Vivonne (the Poet) and how it intertwined with his poetry. We could go as far as to call it a hagiography and I'm very dubious about the idealization of mortal men of our time, and Adrien in particular.
Adrien Vivonne is undoubtedly charismatic, a talented poet with a supernatural ability to transport through his works. Although he never gets recognition as an active writer, his readers increase during the collapse, finding in his texts another, better reality. He is optimistic and innocent, he never has anything bad to say about anyone and he finds happiness in the little things in nature and in literature. His perception of time as cyclical and eternal protects him from the tragedies of his childhood. A dreamer, he spends a large part of his life wandering around the French back-country, living in tiny villages and traveling along small roads and train routes.
It's an ideal life, simple, free, light, and easy. Indeed it is very easy to be Andrien Vivonne, traveling around where his feet take him living in simplicity and writing poetry. His charms make it especially easy to captivate women; the ones whose story we hear fall for him at the very first moment. And after he spends weeks, months, years with them, he abandons them without as much as a warning, sometimes not even a word. Thankfully, his partners no matter how heartbroken always forgive him, it's how he is after all, his particular quality of life, what makes him Adrien. How easy indeed*.
Adrien sees the passage of time as cyclical and eternal, and so when tragedies happen in his family he is not struck by grief. Now again the author acknowledges this is a character fault, but he is quick to justify it by the special way of being that Adrien has. And yet Adrien is shown to grieve the little things denoting the passing of time. His family's suffering never seems to enter the equation. I wish we could have seen Adrien's own thoughts, see him struggle. See the hard parts of his life. For me it's hard to accept a person like this as a saint, someone who can see family members go and leave loved ones behind without struggle or suffering. Difficult experiences are an important part of growing and understanding people around us because we are humans and unfortunately these experiences are part of our life. I can't help but give more credit to someone who faced deep sadness and managed to get out than someone who was born to be forever happy. As it is, Adrien's main struggle is not getting recognition as a poet. And though this is an understandable pain, it is not quite enough for me.
In a way I can relate to our main narrator. His feelings towards Adrien are cast as callous and his actions are definitely reprehensible. Yet it’s hard to fault his feelings towards a friend who seemed to be better at anything that mattered (getting girls, writing, learning effortlessly). For having witnessed a friend group torn apart by envy, there are things that cannot be helped, especially when there is no communication. Of course we can blame him for not walking away in time.
Aside from the Poet himself, it is the philosophy itself that I am somewhat ambivalent about. Our main narrator, a privileged member of the upper class, speaks condescendingly about all his political activity as a young and older person, how it was ultimately pointless and ended up facilitating the rise of the extreme government. Then we have Adrien whose philosophy of life is the eternity of time, how there are infinite worlds out there and that poetry will help us transport to them. Isn’t this a bit like telling us that struggling to make this world better right now is unnecessary because there is something better ahead, a second coming of paradise? Of course this is not what the author means, but his utopic way of living is so vaguely described that it’s hard to see as anything more than a wishful dream.
Leaving aside the main criticisms of the book, there a couple of other issues that increased my frustration. Our main narrator is overly content to give us a description of women’s appearance and breasts, sometimes kindly informing us if he ever thought of sleeping with them. He is not the only one, which makes me suspect it is not simply a character affectation. There is ample idealization of Greece and the Greeks, who somehow manage to prove on average more virtuous in the collapsing world than elsewhere. Color me unimpressed. The escapades of Adrien in the Aegean Islands personally made me think of the romanticized point of view of a tourist (no mention of what happens when the touristic industry that is the lifeblood of many such places collapses).
Overall, I appreciate the book for making me think, but I see it as an expression of many attitudes I am at odds with. I would have DNFed it if it was not a gift.
*
January 1, 2024
Ce livre souffle d'abord le chaud, pendant quelques chapitres, avant de basculer dans la parodie de ce qu'il veut être. Inutilement alourdi par le style et par d'innombrables détours narratifs, l'auteur se sent obligé d'agrémenter son récit de références au sexe, d'éléments "dramatiques", de descriptions géographiques et autre qui ne servent que très peu, finalement, le récit.
Pire, les différentes factions se disputant le pouvoir en France sont complètement ridicules, une tentative de se moquer de notre société actuelle ... qui n'a pourtant pas besoin qu'on s'en moque pour qu'elle soit ridicule.
Bref, l'idée de base est plutôt sympa, son exécution, trop scolaire, classique et peu inspirée, ne m'ont pas permis de m'évader comme l'œuvre de Vivonne, ce poète devenu prophète.
Pire, les différentes factions se disputant le pouvoir en France sont complètement ridicules, une tentative de se moquer de notre société actuelle ... qui n'a pourtant pas besoin qu'on s'en moque pour qu'elle soit ridicule.
Bref, l'idée de base est plutôt sympa, son exécution, trop scolaire, classique et peu inspirée, ne m'ont pas permis de m'évader comme l'œuvre de Vivonne, ce poète devenu prophète.
October 30, 2023
Idée intéressante mais le rythme m’a perturbée…
J’ai eu du mal à finir
J’ai eu du mal à finir
April 29, 2024
Un excellent livre qui n’est pas sans rappeler la poesie de ‘transit’ par Pierre Pelot. A découvrir.
November 30, 2025
Style extrêmement lourd et pesant, je n'ai trouvé aucune fluidité dans le récit, j'ai réellement peiné tout au long de la lecture.
Extrêmement déçue.
Extrêmement déçue.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews