At the "Boutique hotel", the inconsoled traveler balances his accounts

Boutique hotel -

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• Today, “Boutique hôtel” by Christian Dorsan, published on October 1, 2020 by Vibration editions.

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

 by Christian Dorsan, published on October 1, 2020 by Vibration editions.

Her favorite quote:

I play the mysterious and I have fun watching them project their fantasies onto my silence.

Why this book?

• Because the notion of "place" takes a ... place that is singularly crucial

  and intrusive for a book that was not written by Annie Ernaux.

  The place is the one from which one cannot move, that of the “Pater”, proletarian, and of his son, who is aware that he “escapes [his] condition by being afraid to plunge back into it”.

  The place is the one taken by others, who decide "for us".

  And then it is the one that the narrator is stolen from on the plane on the way out, while on the way back, he hurries to join her because he knows she is waiting for him.

  More than a symbol: proof.

• Because the ex-lover the narrator flees from belongs to the middle class

  and therefore socially dominated, in a way that the narrator is aware that “it was to reassure [his parents] that their son was living with someone that the we could model ”.

  He always felt he was "the living moral guarantee of [his parents'] political conviction".

  From then on, fleeing it is much more than trying to recover from a heartache: it is also preparing for a break with its home environment.

• Because homosexuality is a difference that brings people together.

  She's not at the heart of the book: Ex could be a woman, and the story would be the same.

  Ex's family would have the same view of social superiority, and the disturbing similarities to the Créquilles story would be the same.

  But could the narrator have established the same relationship of complicity with a grandfather who confides in him on his fear that his grandson will feel on the margins of the family because of his homosexuality?

  That is a feeling he can talk about, because he has personally experienced it ...

• Because "Ex" is not there, and yet, the book draws

  a complete portrait

  of him

  because everything brings to him: the breakdown of the parents, the story of Créquilles, Aboyeur et Bô Gosse, but also the preparation of the suitcase or the breakfast buffet.

  “He no longer has the right to be in what I am living.

  And yet, he is present every time ”: rarely will we have had such a beautiful portrait of a man that we never see… to such a point that nothing seems more natural than to see him appear anyway.

  At the risk of not recognizing it ...

• Because after

  The One of Us Who Goes First

  , I happily rediscovered the very personal style of Christian Dorsan, who excels in imprinting double meanings on his sentences by giving his characters names inspired by their salient features ( Ex and Substitute, but also Flotte au vent, Nice little couple, Crutches, Barker…).

  This offers us the reading of tasty phrases that make us smile out of place.

  "Barker has therefore started his service, I can join Créquilles": believe me, in this sentence, "crutches", which is the name of the confidante, has a real double meaning ...

  
  

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

 To escape the marriage of his ex-lover, the narrator leaves for a week on an island, at the Boutique Hotel, because "in the journey, we are rid of ourselves in our habits".

But how do you find yourself when everything brings out the memory of "Ex"?

Not in a predictable way, anyway!

Characters.

 A gallery of characters, with a revealing attention to detail… Out of snobbery, Ex had decided that he and the narrator would be bearded.

The narrator shaves: gesture of affirmation after being dumped.

Ex, him, shaves under the influence of Substitute.

In their trio, who took the place of the other?

Places.

 It is not trivial that the story takes place on an island, a place of passage about which we will know little, and where we have to recreate habits.

When the narrator leaves her, he declares: "I leave myself here: all that part of me that weighed on me will remain on this island".

The island is "his place" ...

The time.

 A time when you can both use a cell phone to send an SMS that you regret, and live a week without opening the same phone.

Ours, then, but with a subtle difference.

Of course !

Just as an island suspends reality, the week at Boutique Hotel suspends time.

The author.

 Christian Dorsan signs a sixth novel that makes you want to talk about it as brilliantly as he regularly does for those of others in the

columns

.

Even if he says "We are never really ourselves for others, we are only the image they have of us".

This book was read with

 a feeling of universality: who has not thought one day "I am a residue of our couple, and I am fighting against this vestige"?

No one, and the stages of rebirth that the narrator goes through could be ours.

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