Paris (AFP)
An unpublished and unfinished novel by Françoise Sagan, "The four corners of the heart" comes out in bookstores Thursday nearly fifteen years after the death of the author of "Hello sadness".
Published by Plon, "The four corners of the heart" had not been announced in the program of the publisher who intends to take advantage of this "coup" editorial with an exceptional circulation of 70,000 copies.
The small world of publishing had rustled in recent months of rumors around the release of an unpublished work of a deceased author. Some magazines had evoked for this mystery book a huge print (and improbable) of 250,000 copies
We find in the novel by Françoise Sagan the distanced and sarcastic style that is the charm of his work. But we also remain unsatisfied. The novel retains a taste of unfinished.
The characters and scenery appear a little outdated. The son of a wealthy industrialist from Luxembourg who made a fortune in vegetables, Ludovic Cresson is the victim of a terrible car accident (we are obviously thinking of the man who nearly cost the life of the novelist in April 1957). Before the accident, his couple was already flying. Marie-Laure, his wife "sophisticated and without culture" disdains this diminished man. The mother of Marie-Laure, Fanny (whose husband Quentin died in a plane crash) is not insensitive to the charm of his son-in-law ...
It is Denis Westhoff, the son of the novelist, who signs the preface of the book.
He says he discovered the manuscript of this novel almost by "miracle" after the death of his mother in 2004 since all the property of the novelist had been "seized, sold, given or acquired in a questionable manner". The book, in two volumes "typed, had been so photocopied that the outline of the letters was not quite clear," adds the son of the novelist.
"The text had confused by his writing violently saganesque, his character sometimes impudent, his tone so baroque and the incredible of certain adventures", puts forward Denis Westhoff who also acknowledges retouching the book.
The manuscript was "deprived of certain words, sometimes even entire passages," he justifies to explain his interventions. Denis Westhoff said he had made "corrections that (it) seemed necessary taking care not to touch the style, or the tone of the novel".
The text ends on the beginning of a big party where we suppose that the masks could fall. But we will never know it.
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