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Today, "The broken toy store" by Julien Rampin, published on April 12, 2022 by Éditions Charleston.
Marceline Bodier, bookstagramer and contributor to the 20 Minutes
Books
reading group , recommends
Julien Rampin's
Broken Toy Store , published on April 12, 2022 by Éditions Charleston.
His favorite quote:
Life is a poem.
A dark, dramatic, incomprehensible poem written by a madman.
A poem that one would like to tear up and never have read.
Why this book?
Because it's the story of several generations:
those born in the 1950s, 1980s and 2010s. It's also the story of several midlife crises: in 1989, in 2019 and finally in 2049, when Léon became a writer whose sensitivity was forged in contact with the wounds of the generations that preceded him.
And it's the story of what time suspends in us, because at 90, "it's an old man who is sitting there and yet he's also the young man of about thirty, transfixed with love, which leaps with joy”.
Because it is our 2.0 lives that are sketched
through characters just as broken as the toys in the store that you will discover.
Paul-Henry is… a bookstagrammer (any resemblance to the author…).
Martine spies on her neighbors through a peephole, but also on social networks: in both cases, with as much delight as dread.
She spends hours in front of the Sims, where she takes on a power she is unable to contemplate in life.
She gives the beautiful role to Nénette, her best friend, who paints... and to find out who Nénette is, go to the novel!
Because as in
his first book
,
Julien Rampin, who is just in his forties, excels at describing old age and the place of old people in our lives.
Yes, he resolutely writes "old", without euphemizing, because there is no question of running away from a single aspect of this reality: becoming old, therefore being on earth for a long time, with all that that implies of experience. and desire to pass on for some, and resentment and regret for others.
For him, old age is a “strange twilight”, but one which above all does not interrupt the quest for meaning that is a life.
Because it is an extremely benevolent book, just like its author.
But it's also a book where loneliness and failure are very well described: “I'm like that bookmark there.
I was left somewhere in 1989. Since then, I've been waiting for the course of things to finally resume..." And benevolence does not prevent ambivalence: "She cannot explain to her sister how much she sometimes feels to be two totally different people.
Lovers of feel-good will find what they are looking for, but so will others!
Because it's a militant book on homosexuality.
Being homosexual today is not like being in 1989 and if we internalize norms, they are no longer the same.
I thought of
La vie rêvée des hommes
by François Roux, which also explores the evolution of the way homosexuality has been experienced and accepted (or not) since the second half of the 20th century, in France and in the USA.
François Roux develops the historical context which is only implicit in Le
Magasin destoyesbroken
, and which has, in both books as in reality, shattered lives… but in the name of what?
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
When Lola moves in with her son Léon in a new apartment after his breakup, she tries to put some distance with the failure of her life.
She does not suspect that what she will find there is the story after which she did not know she was running...
Characters.
Jean-Henry, Martine, Lola, Léon: for everyone, Gabriel played a central role.
However, he is largely absent from their lives, and only in the background of the book: but precisely, that is why he was able to demolish them.
For everyone, it is “the other side of uncharted territory”.
Places.
There's a toy store, of course.
They have not always been broken, but they are like life: new, they have welcomed love;
then they saw it evolve;
and finally, "there are chests, filled with old broken toys, which are best never opened".
Or not…
The time.
Three eras, three generations, three thirties, three ways of conceiving the place of homosexuality.
But basically, “we are all waiting for something, Paul-Henry.
But most of the time, it never happens.
This observation is as much a prison as the means of freeing oneself from it.
The author.
Literary blogger Julien Rampin went to the other side of the pen with Grandir un peu.
He returns with a second novel where we find with pleasure his benevolence and his humanity, not devoid of militancy and exploration of our dark sides: an effective and skilfully dosed cocktail!
This book was read with
the feeling of reuniting with an old friend who winks at his first novel, and also, at his own life, which he lets glimpse on social networks.
Autofiction?
It doesn't matter: fact or fiction, everything is put at the service of the pleasure of reading!
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Book sheet 20 Minutes
Books
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Old age
Homosexuality