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Four summers, four moments, from Smells Like Teen Spirit to the ’98 World Cup: a dizzying narrative of how life in France flows on the brink of time, in townships and expensive suburbs, in the countryside on the one hand and the cement cities on the other.
August 1992. A valley lost somewhere to the east, blast furnaces that no longer burn, a lake, an afternoon in the heatwave. Anthony is fourteen years old and, to entertain his boredom, steals a canoe with his cousin to see what is happening on the other side, where the famous nudist bank is located. Upon arriving, Anthony will meet his first love, his first real summer, that will determine the rest. And so begins the drama of life. In this book, Nicolas Mathieu writes the novel of a valley, a time, but also of adolescence, recounts the political story of a youth who must find her way into a dying world. Four summers, four moments, from Smells Like Teen Spirit to the ’98 World Cup: a dizzying narrative of how life in France flows on the brink of time, in townships and expensive suburbs, in the countryside on the one hand and the cement cities on the other. He talks about the France of beer Picon and Johnny Hallyday, of fetes and summer TV shows, for men tired from work and their lovers who have been worn out in their twenties. A forgotten place from the counters of globalization, caught between nostalgia and decline, decency and rage.
Social mural of a de-industrialized Lorraine and at the same time a Bildungsroman, Nicolas Mathieu’s book speaks with magnificent power about an impossible love affair with the background of social degradation, perdition of ethos, the despair but also the stubbornness of people.
Nicolas Mathieu is an author of the crisis, a militant in words. His second novel, “And Their Children After Them,” is profoundly social and political and at the same time addictive, because the idea never prevails over language and the message over rhythm. The author conceives the writing process as a boxing match, as words have to be relevant to best reflect the violence of power relations.
A magnificent polyphonic novel. Nicolas Mathieu is a stylist who transfuses incredible power to fiction.
A great novel that is balanced, fair, keen, beautiful. Excellent work, as we would say, watching an adorable piece of steel come out of the forge.
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Nicolas Mathieu
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