“Les Déviantes”, a novel that thinks outside the box

The deviant -

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• Today, “Les deviantes” by Capucine Delattre, published on August 20, 2020 by Belfond editions.

Marceline Bodier, contributor to the 20 Minutes Books reading group, recommends

 by Capucine Delattre, published on August 20, 2020 by Belfond editions.

Her favorite quote:

Aging takes a lot less time than it does thinking about it.

Why this book?

• Because it's a book about how a drama

  like cancer can turn life around, not a cancer novel.

  There is very little question of the concrete reality of the disease, but essentially of the way in which the relationship to the world, to time, and to others, changes when a vital threat weighs down: the desire to change, to take a step aside. , to deviate from his path, was already there, but the cancer puts in an emergency which obliges to take this step aside now, or perhaps never.

  "I don't have time to let you hesitate one hundred and seven years, I have a fatal disease, okay?

  "

• Because after having pronounced these words, Anastasia adds

  “with deceit”, “it is practical, the cancer card.

  Cancer therefore appears as a pretext to face the question that no generation can avoid: when do we go on to adulthood, how, by making what compromises?

  If the first pass was just what the others wanted for us, will we have a second chance?

  At 29 years old, Anastasia and Iris have this second chance, which allows Lolita to ask herself the question from the age of 17.

  But it's terrible that it took cancer ...

• Because we wouldn't know what the heroines are deviating from

  if they didn't find on their way a gallery of characters who are above all attached to appearances (because they "know how to surround themselves" in the event of cancer, because they tick all the marriage-work-children boxes, because they cannot bear the idea that a stable love affair can be overwhelming…).

  To go beyond appearances, there is only one way out: rediscover "the taste for rampage".

  At 19, 29, 93, or the reader's age, whatever it is.

  “She crossed the line, she knows it.

  It was time.

  "

• Because the author herself is only 19 years old, and it matters

  to know it: I read the novel by finding my 29 years old as they could have been deciphered by the one I was at 19 years, knowing well what compromises I made to pass to this damn adulthood.

  However, at any age, doing the exercise of projecting yourself into the future means giving yourself the opportunity to make your choices clear: if I don't want to be either Anastasia or Iris when I'm 29, what should I do? I do if I am Lolita's age?

  And if I want to like what I'll see in my rearview mirror at 60, how do I deviate from my 50s?

  
  

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

"Three young people who will not let themselves be broken, three vocations on the march, three assumed deviances".

And a book in three parts plus one, “Women”, to conclude by answering this question: what interest do we have in understanding the meaning of the word “youth” even at 93 years old?

Characters.

 The three parts of the book center around Anastasia, Iris, and Lolita.

They are young, and they deviate from their life all mapped out when the cancer of one gives them "the awareness, for the first time, that we have lost the privilege of having life in front of us".

A chance ?

Places.

 You might think the novel takes place in Paris, between an apartment and a hospital.

But it seriously deviates from its path until it leads us to the island of Oléron, which is for Anastasia "her free zone, her no man's land".

The place of the novel is the one that allows one to find oneself.

The time.

 In literature, who knew this incredible time: our century, seen by a timeless adult who did not know the previous century?

It is to this discovery that

invites us

.

The author.

 I can't believe it when I write it: Capucine Delattre is only 19 years old and the older her characters, the more she knows how to make them believable.

She did well to deviate from the rails of the wise child on the benches of Sciences Po to offer us a first novel which deeply moved me, me, a 50-year-old woman ...

This book was read with

 amazement to find that it is possible to identify with characters who have ages that I have already lived, described by a young woman who can only imagine them yet.

To say that Capucine Delattre is an author to follow is really the least of things ...

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