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Perhaps better known for the eponymous debut film by Louis Malle, shot in 1958, and also for the splendid soundtrack by a young Miles Davis in a state of grace.
This 1956 noir takes place over a weekend in Paris.
A Paris of the fifties, frenetic and gloomy, where emotions run high and desires are absolute.
The characters in this book are like this, they want everything and they want it immediately, without shame or moralism of any kind except for fake, facade values because, in the end, that's what matters to them.
The plot of the novel is somewhat different from that of the film or rather, the film has some variations compared to the book.
In the first part, we see the protagonist Julien orchestrating the perfect crime. His victim is a loan shark to whom Julien, a fraudulent entrepreneur, owed a large sum, and with a stratagem, he commits the crime. It seems that everything is going in the right direction, but some small hitches start to create an inexorable vortex, gradually leading to a general upheaval: it will be an elevator that literally leads him to the gallows.
The involuntary deus ex machina is the porter of the building where the crime takes place, and it will be the same porter who at the end of the story will deliver the coup de grâce to the protagonist, again involuntarily.
After the crime, a series of clever interlocks, well concocted by the author, lead to the awareness of the other characters and their parallel stories. First and foremost, the wife, a spoiled and jealous woman who sets in motion a whirlwind of false truths.
Then her brother and his wife, part of the good Parisian bourgeoisie, incapable of making sense of their lives.
A couple of young lovers, by chance, becomes the balance point of the story.
I would not want to spoil the tale which develops with a gripping pace, involving other characters or rather various couples of characters, leading to a paroxysmal finale where crime does not pay, even if it's the wrong crime.
It depicts a fragmented and somewhat amoral society where everything is confused between sexual and homicidal impulses, a snapshot of a generation that emerged from the war and was then destabilized by the economic boom, where not even a new life can stop the tragic epilogue.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover a writer, surprisingly and despite the name, Italian.
It is a page-turner, the dialogues are tight, the introspection into the characters is precise and essential, the mechanism of action is well-oiled and captivates the reader to the end.
It's truly a shame that this novel did not achieve the success it deserved but, probably, it was somewhat overshadowed by the enormous resonance that Malle's film had.
A si biri
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