La Délicatesse

La délicatesse by David Foenkinos
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In David Foenkinos's La délicatesse, the beautiful and enigmatic Nathalie becomes a widow after her husband's sudden death. From thereon impenetrable, she coolly deflects the sexual advances of Charles, her boss, and channels her grief into her work. Yet the unexpected happens when Nathalie - out of the blue - kisses her Swedish colleague Markus on the lips. Although the kiss is merely "un acte gratuit" (an unwarranted act) to Nathalie, Markus - old, balding, single, awkward and unlucky with the ladies - is overwhelmed, stupified and approaches her. Between them, a friendship forms and finally develops into 'something more' that is both unlikely and lovely.

The theme of chance, as evidenced by le baiser gratuit (the unwarranted kiss), runs throughout the novel. The idea of coincidence determining destiny is also clear in one of the most-cited extracts from La délicatesse, the scene in which Nathalie and her husband go on their first date:

"Le jus d'abricot, c'est parfait. Si elle choisit ça, je l'épouse... -
Je vais prendre un jus... Un jus d'abricot, répondit Nathalie. Il la regarda comme si elle était une effraction de la réalité.

It is because Foenkinos makes us wonder at these miracles that we are so easily drawn into the novel. Despite everything that seems to happen by chance in the novel, however, Foenkinos ties the whole story together in 117 'mini' chapters, which are not only told from the points of view of Nathalie, Markus and even Charles, but sometimes also consist of nothing but facts. For instance, one chapter will describe Nathalie and Markus having dinner together and then next will simply enumerate the ingredients used to make their risotto. One chapter will tells us about how Nathalie hops on a train and the next will detail the arrival and departure times of her journey. In some ways, this is the juxtaposition between the surreal and banal, the circumstantial and deliberate.

It is in one of these chapters that Foenkinos cites Larousse in explaining the literal meaning of the title:

La délicatesse : n.f.
1. Fait d’être délicat. (To be delicate)
2. Litt. Etre en délicatesse avec quelqu’un : être en froid, en mauvais termes avec quelqu’un. (To be in delicacy with someone: to be on bad terms with someone)

Indeed, delicacy manifests itself throughout the novel. Nathalie herself is delicate in a petit and charming way and is the outwardly embodiment of delicacy. Yet after she becomes widowed, she finds herself in a delicate situation of which the indelicate Charles hopes to take advantage. As Nathalie herself concludes, even Chloe - her colleague - asks indelicate questions and cares only for "des ragots" (gossip). Nathalie becomes "en délicatesse" with them. On the other end of the delicacy spectrum, however, is Markus. Considerate of Nathalie's feelings and gentle towards her, Markus encapsulates the warmth and understanding of delicacy. It is through such delicacy that Nathalie finds solace and renewed love. For example, we are told in the first page of the novel that is "assez rare pour une Nathalie" (rare for a Nathalie) to not feel any nostalgia. Yet after Markus gives her un distributeur de Pez as a gift, she is transported back into her childhood past. How lovely is it that Foenkinos shows us delicacy in a man whom is otherwise regarded by those around him as graceless and ungainly?

Finally, the novel itself is also a work of great delicacy. In the final chapters, Nathalie reveals that she used to play hide-and-seek in her garden and would open her eyes after 117 seconds. Of course, the question of chance and coincidence now emerges in not only the story but also in the work, for it is in the 117th chapter that the novel concludes with a one-liner: Nathalie ouvrit les yeux. In a poetic and delicate way, it is indeed as if each chapter of the novel was only a second.

It is within one of these "seconds" that Foenkinos writes one of the most striking lines I have ever read in any French novel: "le Larousse s'arrête là où commence le coeur" (Dictionaries stops where the heart starts). So, although Foenkinos intersperses what appears to be fortuitous with facts and definitions throughout La délicatesse, it is finally emotion from le coeur - the impulsive act of un baiser gratuit - that trumps rationality and brings two seemingly disparate, but delicate, individuals together.

La vie peut être belle quand on sait l'inconvénient d'être né.

Pourquoi sommes-nous autant marqués par un détail, un geste, qui font de ces instants minimes le coeur d'une époque?

On peut penser, toujours dans la folie, d'un mouvement presque démiurge, que l'on est au coeur du coeur de l'autre. Que la vie se résume à un vase clos des valves pulmonaires.

Le sentiment amoureux est le sentiment le plus culpabilisant. On peut alors penser que toutes les plaies de l'autre viennent de soi. On peut penser, toujours dans la folie, d'un mouvement presque démiurge, que l'on est au coeur du coeur de l'autre. Que la vie se résume à un vase clos des valves pulmonaires.

La vie peut être belle quand on sait l'inconvénient d'être né.

Le sommeil est un chemin qui mène à la soupe du lendemain.

Après leur dernier échange, il était parti lentement. Sans faire de bruit. Aussi discret qu'un point-virgule dans un roman de huit cents pages.

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Nothing existed except murder and lust

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Q: What do you get when you cross Macbeth with Madame Bovary?
A: Thérèse Raquin

Zola's chef-d'œuvre isn't a pleasant read; then again, with any novel that (quote the blurb) explores the "darkest aspects of human existence," fair doses of morbidness and enormity are expected.

Abandoned by her father and left motherless at an early age, Thérèse Raquin's spends her childhood under the oppressive custody of her aunt, the haberdasher Madame Raquin, and in the same sickly bed as her frail cousin, Camille. Stifling her two children in her overbearing clutches and loving her son all the more for his weakness, Madame Raquin is determined to never lose Thérèse or Camille and decides to marry them. The two - Camille, in his "sickly languor and his saintly, self-centered calm" and Thérèse with her "mild indifference, [...] terrifying in her impassivity" wordlessly accept the future their aunt has drafted for them. Yet when the family moves to Paris and settles in the "acrid dampness" of Passage du Point Neuf, Thérèse is introduced to Laurent, Camille's colleague, and the two plunge into the "grim throes of adultery." Laurent entered it originally only to satisfy the appetites of his "bohemian existence" and find a woman who would "cost him nothing;" Thérèse, struck by the sudden arrival of "a real man," tired of putting up with a husband "shivering with fever" and resentful of the sickly home in which she had been kept in all her life, uses the affair as an outlet to unleash "passion dormant" within her.

Yet as the affair continues, both are unable to overcome the insatiable nature of their intimacy. The bulwark to their attachment suddenly reveals itself in the feeble, puny form of ... Camille. So, out of a wild, impetuous desire to cement their relationship, the two commit the crime that casts them into the anguish of a "desolate, intolerable, existence:" MURDER.

They are henceforth titled by Zola as "the two murderers" and between them, where 'love' should have flourished instead stems "an affinity of blood and lust." And the "terrifying disease" they contradict, "a sort of hysteria of murder,” drives them to hallucinations, abuse and - eventually - suicide.

Hence the Macbeth//Madame Bovary parallel.

If this novel were a proverb, it would probably be: "be careful of what you wish for." Indeed, drowning Camille did not give Laurent the idle life he desired or the freedom for romance he had envisioned. Moreover, after the repercussions of murder give him the "astonishing sensibility" he lacked before as an artist, he destroys his work because all the portraits he paints, although brimming with potential, manifest in each line and figure the contorted figures of the dead Camille.

In fact, everything the novel's characters hope to achieve arrives at the opposite effect. There is an overarching theme of karma. Camille secretly hoped for one of his colleagues to die so that he could take his post - he dies instead. Laurent, greedy for a life of gluttony and idleness, orchestrates a murder that haunts him forever. Madame Raquin, out of selfishness and an urge for self-preservation, encourages Laurent and Thérèse's marriage yet unwittingly bestows her life's savings to her murderers (at least she got her 'revenge.' Perhaps the only one in the novel who really did). The novel is poisoned by disparities. Elements such as blood and lust, meant to be sitting at the opposite ends of a table, find themselves sharing the same seat instead. The characters in the novel show their ugliest sides. Even Madame Raquin, after learning of her children's treachery ("my child was killed by my children"), loses faith in God and takes pleasure in the horrifying hobby of watching Laurent and Thérèse slowly but surely kill themselves.

Moreover, there is the theme of encasement. Whether it is exhibited in the way Thérèse has an "immense capacity for calm that hid[es] violent fits of passion," the morbid way in which Laurent locks himself in his studio out of fear of an imaginatined spectre, or the effing chilling manner in which the paralysed Madame Raquin foments her inner hatred, everything - from people to emotions - are entombed. There is an unsettling parallel between 1) Thérèse complaining that her aunt "buried [...her] alive in this vile shop" and 2) being “seized with hallucinations, [...thinking that] she was buried in some vault together with a lot of puppet-like corpses which nodded their heads and moved their legs and arms when you pulled the strings.”

So morbid, and to think that I actually read the morgue descriptions over breakfast.

The whole novel is founded on sickliness, disease. There is Camille, the physically weak, and then there is the affair between Laurent and Thérèse, equally feverish in its short-lived ardour. The "mean, soiled shadows" of Passage du Point-Neuf do not contribute to any sort of convalescence, either.

So this is not a novel you would take with you to read on the glowing beaches of Hawaii or when eager for a zen weekend. And the parts of the novel sort of falls int 'etc. mode,' where the reader is treated to extended (and to great effect) details of Laurent and Thérèse's suffering and insanity.

Yet we watch them descend into madness, plagued by fear. Perhaps not the same way François the cat does, eerily and silently, and definitely not the way Madame Raquin does towards the end of the novel ("a bright spark of joy glowed in her eyes when Laurent raised his broad hand against Thérèse's head"), but us readers observe nonetheless. And with each turned page, we are exposed to anguish, horror, madness... then with the speed of a "shaft of lightning," like their passion, it is all over.



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