– Michel Bussi has returned to Normandy
In “My heart is moved”, the Rouen author paints a vibrant portrait of a woman and that of her city. In bookstores this Thursday.
Published today at 11am
The Norman author Michel Bussi publishes this Thursday, January 11, his nineteenth novel, “My heart is moved”, whose action takes place in Rouen.
AFP
Dieppe in “Un avion sans elle”, Le Havre in “Maman a tort”, the landing beaches in “Carved in the sand”, the cliffs of Yport in “N’oubli Jam” or the – imaginary – island of Mornesey in “Family blood”. Michel Bussi has already made his Normandy the backdrop to many of his novels.
After teleporting to 2097 in “Nouvelle Babel” (2022) and traveling to the Ardennes with “Three Lives a Week” (2023), the writer born in Louviers, south of Rouen, returns to his homeland this Thursday with “The my heart has moved”. A nineteenth work which, if it does not revolutionize the Bussi machine, remains extremely effective.
The former expert in electoral geography and territorial recompositions makes the Norman capital his playground of illusions. Until the final twist. An art of omission and blind spots in which the writer is regularly included among the best-selling authors in France (read the box)maintains control.
In 2016, it was estimated that one in a hundred French people had read one of his novels. In 2019, Michel Bussi placed three titles in the top 50 of the year, for a total of 523,000 copies sold according to the GfK company. In 2020, the year of the release of “Au soleil redouté”, it rose to 815,003, which places him in third place among the best-selling authors in France behind Guillaume Musso (1,509,662 copies) and Virginie Grimaldi (827,561 copies).
The following year it reached fourth place in the charts (721,000 copies) before dropping out of the top 10 a year later. Last year, “Three Lives a Week” was No. 2 in sales (12,132 books sold) the week of its release. The paperback version of “Nouvelle Babel” ranked 4th (11,868 copies).
revenge novel
It is the spring of 1983. At the age of 7, Ophélie, or Folette as she is nicknamed, witnesses yet another argument between her mother and her alcoholic and violent father. It will be the last. Convinced that her father was the cause of the fall that caused her mother’s death, she also blames her social worker who, in her eyes, failed to protect her and since then he has become one of the most ahead of the region. From that moment on she will never stop wanting to prove her guilt. Her revenge will last about fifteen years, from the rooms of a shelter for adolescents to the classrooms of the city university, passing through the desks of a Catholic college.
The novel thus paints the portrait of a heroine with a heart blackened by hatred. If the character’s obsession can sometimes be annoying, the author has the intelligence to be transparent about the destructive nature of this search, in particular thanks to the way in which Nina, her childhood friend, looks at her. and Béné, her son. The novel is also dedicated to these professionals. Their empathy for Folette therefore becomes ours.
Humanist fibre
Strong female figures therefore, but also a search for origins (especially of the father) and musical references – the title refers to the lyrics of “Si Maman, Si”, a hit by France Gall by Michel Berger – Michel Bussi takes up the ingredients that he they are expensive. And serve a plot that shows her humanist fiber, in the manner of what she had achieved in “We found her rather cute” (2018), a novel that tells the migratory journey of a woman, mother of three children, in the era of globalization.
As we said, Michel Bussi loves to place his stories in very specific places. The former geographer uses his knowledge of the city of a hundred bell towers here – he participated in the writing of the work “Rouen, the forgotten metropolis?”. And he feels the pulse, the social fractures that cross it and the often imperfect responses of communities and individuals to inequalities. From the slopes of the rich Mont Fortin neighborhood to the quays of the Seine where the Armada takes place, a gathering of large sailing ships of which the author was godfather last year.
“My heart was moved”, Michel Bussi, ed. Presse della Cité, 392 p.
Read alsoLea Gloor has been a journalist in the culture section since 2023. She covers, among other things, performing arts and series news. You graduated in 2014 from the Academy of Journalism and Media of the University of Neuchâtel and previously worked for ArcInfo.More information@LeaGloor
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2024-01-11 10:00:36
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