Les petites filles respirent le même air que nous

by Paul Fournel

"On a joué à bleu-blanc-rouge. Quand la grosse Josiane s'est retournée pour nous surprendre, Maline s'est statufiée. Elle reste, bras écartés, bouche ouverte et jambe en l'air, comme une danseuse pataude. Les autres sont immobiles, au garde-à-vous. On jurerait qu'elles n'ont pas bougé. Madeleine quitte brusquement le jeu, sans raison ; elle s'ébroue, esquisse un ou deux mouvements de gymnastique et va pour rentrer en classe. En frôlant Maline, elle murmure : - Si la mort passe, tu resteras comme ça et on ne pourra même pas t'enterrer." Dix petites filles inquiètes, dans dix-neuf nouvelles, qui jouent à cache-cache avec l'envie de grandir et la peur d'être grandes. Dix petites filles tendres dans les moments douloureux, ravissants ou magiques de leurs existences.

Genres: Short Stories, French Literature

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 3 out of 5]

A dusty Oulipo book from the late seventies, extremely traditional in approach but often funny and moving. A collection of vignettes about various French schoolgirls and the tender coming-of-age moments that makes life so whimsical and cute, if you happen to be bourgeois. This author’s other English book Need For the Bike is an 2000+ page lipogram written in Latin about a lost lemon squeezer, featuring deleted Sappho fragments and a previously unwritten Harper Lee sequel, To Flog a Dead Mockingbird. In the year 2014, Paul will release a 9,000 volume series of books about how Mark Danielewski picks the fluff from his navel. Exciting things doth grow in the avant garden.

[Kamakana · Rating 4 out of 5]

120119: i am surprised at how ‘cute/heartwarming’ this work is. somehow i kept waiting for the text to turn perverse in that intellectual/avant-garde manner inevitably connected to de Sade. this is after all close psychological introspection (at each their ages) and so maybe there should be revelation of essentially dark undercurrents of childhood desires. but no. these are short short stories about very young provincial girls undergoing typical, ordinary, changing, not traumatic but curious events. this is recounted in the current age voice of the girl, contrasted with omniscient voice perhaps ironically recasting the moments... but in the nature of childhood, it is the imaginative, emotional, subjective world of each little girl that is ‘real’...