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Today, "The heart does not yield" by Grégoire Bouillier was published on August 31, 2022 by Éditions Flammarion
Musemanias Books, blogger and contributor to the 20 Minutes Books reading group, recommends
The heart does not yield
by Grégoire Bouillier, published on August 31, 2022 by Éditions Flammarion.
His favorite quote:
“As pleasant as they are, many crushes (“one-night stands”) are not intended to become love stories”.
Why this book?
Because Grégoire Bouillier started from a real news item
that took place during the 1980s in Paris.
It was both a human drama but also a societal drama.
One day, Marcelle Pichon decides to stop eating.
This sexagenarian then keeps a diary throughout her agony, which lasts nearly 45 days and this, until her death.
His body was then only found ten months later in his small apartment in the heart of Paris.
Because from this idea comes an investigation carried out
by the agency Bmore Investigations, commissioned by the narrator, a failed writer in the person of Grégoire Bouillier.
Because this book takes up the investigations carried out by Bmore
and his assistant, Penny, on this atrocious end by starvation that Marcelle Pichon inflicted on herself.
They try to understand who she really was, who made up her entourage, to know why she decided to do this terrible act and this way of dying and how her disappearance for more than ten months escaped everyone.
Because a veritable labyrinth around this tragic news item,
this book is made up of erroneous leads, dead ends, distortions that sometimes risk losing its readership.
However, many will be those who will see in it the certain talent on the part of this writer, Grégoire Bouillier, and rightly so.
Because the literary, cinematographic and musical references
are very numerous and very detailed.
The work of research but also intellectual as well as the culture of the author seem without fund.
I was simply overwhelmed by it because I don't think I ever found myself in a book made up of a multitude of this genre.
Because endowed with a thousand and one qualities (a number almost equivalent
to its number of pages), it is all the same a reading that requires time and attention, especially in view of the countless and complex digressions initiated by the author.
A constantly and considerably intelligent and moving book.
The essentials in 2 minutes
The plot.
August 1985. In Paris, a woman starved herself to death at home for forty-five days while keeping a diary of her agony.
His corpse was not discovered until ten months later.
At the time, Grégoire Bouillier heard this news item on the radio.
And never forget it again.
Characters.
The Bmore Investigations agency, mandated by the narrator, a failed writer in the person of Grégoire Bouillier.
Places.
France
The time.
Contemporary with jumps in time.
The author.
Grégoire Bouillier is a French writer who published his first book at the age of 40.
Previously, he was a painter but also an office worker and also a journalist.
"The heart does not yield" is his seventh novel.
This book was read with
rigor: by virtue of its qualities and number of pages, it is therefore a demanding read but whose finesse and ingenuity invite the reader to embark on an odyssey through time and space, beyond of the common.
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