The Birthday party by Laurent Mauvignier

The Birthday Party by Laurent Mauvignier

French fiction

Original title – Histories de la nuit

Translator -Daniel Levin Becker

Source – Personal copy

When the longlist came out there were a couple of books from Fitzcarraldo, as there is every year, it seems, and I hadn’t got them, but as they are a publisher, I have yet to read a book I have really hated (that said I rarely read bad books I have a built-in radar for books I enjoy). Mauvignier is a writer that studies art and has written several books a couple of which have been translated by other publishers over the years. This is his first book from Fitzcarraldo and was the last book by him to be published in French. The title is different from the French title. I do wonder if it is to give the books a little nod towards the Pinter play of the same title, which shares a few characteristics. He has also written for tv and film. There is a sense of that this could easily be a six-part drama series in a novel.

Well, instead of chitchatting, you’d better hurry up.

It’s true, Christine is right, he has to put up the decorations in the living room and set the table, go into town

– not exactly next door, because of the risk of traffic on the ring road – it’s Bergogne who speaks of the ring road, while Christine, incorrigible Parisienne that she is, calls it the périph, as though the name would change anything about the reality of the fifty-odd kilometres Bergogne has to travel to pick up his wife’s gift.

Early on as the night is getting underway .

The book is set over the course of one evening in Rural France as a husband comes home to sort out the 40th birthday party for his wife, Marion. Marion is due home later. She is a figure of mystery to fill out the village they live in. There is a daughter Ida and a neighbour, Christine, an artist whose star is fading. Still, she actually spends most of her time looking after Ida after school as the parents have to work hard to keep her head above water Patirce, the father and husband of the family, is working the family farm, and his wife is working to help out. So Ida spends more time with Christine than with her parents. The other house in the three-house hamlet of three lone girls is empty. So the evening begins to unfold a car appears, and there have been some letters sent that have unnerved the family, and there is a sense that there is more to Marion, the wife’s life before they meet is a blank slate as she talks little around it. So her husband is unaware of why she has this huge tattoo and why she has it. What is her real past? What happens when a person’s dark past catches up on them and the past and present collide? This is what is at the heart of the story; it is a thriller about when ones past catches you in the present and the fallout from that meeting. Who has come to three lone girls on her 40th birthday? What is her past? Why is there so much violence from her past?

For now, the only thing that really changes with Bergogne’s arrival is that one of the two men, the older one, the one who said his name was Christophe and who wanted to see the house for sale, said he’d have to go down to, he said, welcome Mister Bergogne.

That’s what he said: welcome Mister Bergogne.

Mister Bergogne, and Christine thought just you wait to welcome Mister Bergogne’s fist to your face, pretending not to be surprised that in saying this the man had above all confessed to her that he wasn’t here by chance, that he knew the names of the hamlet’s residents; and in spite of her anger, she still can’t get over these words that seem so respectful and polite but that are really what, she won-ders, these words that beneath their polish barely hide their irony and sarcasm, Mister Bergogne,

The two home invaders are there when Patrice returns but

I said this could have been a six-part drama. The way the story unfolded reminded me of the Canadian tv series Cardinal which, like this book, is a slow burner of a series and this is that type of book slow but still page-turner novel it is hard to combine both and make it work. He does to some point aI still would have like to have seen 100 or so pages cut but is has a French feel to it reminding me of slow-moving films like le boucher where the action is slow and also set in a village has a lot of violence but also has a similar pace to this book. That is because, actually, sometimes in real life, these things are slow to develop it just is as the night happens, we see the past of his wife come to light as these men have done a home invasion and taken all of these small hamlet hostage. All of this is standard thriller territory. The home invasion, the dark past, and the social position the family find themselves in rural politics is also thrown into the mix. It is like someone has hired Thomas Bernhard to write an action thriller, and this is his take on the thriller. A book that is a take on a thriller using a more modernist in style than a page-turner may be the first thriller of the slow movement !!

Winstons score – B,I’d love see what he writes next, if this is just a one-off or if he is writing a new style of thriller !!