L'ogre

Tiring for the moment of Agatha, renewed my study of contemporary Goncourt laureates with L'ogre by one Jacques Chessex, prompted by a notice of a translation in the TLS.

Amazon came up with rather a posh version, not your usual cream coloured paperback at all, rather a hardback, nicely bound in red cloth and complete with red ribbon to mark one's place. A book club edition, but a slightly posh book club which has, inter alia, the affectation of numbering each book, this one being number 4967. For the money I also get some flannel wrapping: some notes by the author, some pictures of the author and various short essays by literary types. Not like your Anglo Saxon book club edition at all, with these last generally pumping out very cheap editions for the readers of things like the 'Daily Mail' or the 'Readers' Digest'. This (late lamented) last being the subject of one of my mother's pet hates along with, for example, Enid Blyton.

I learn from Wikipedia that Chessex is rather a rare bird, a Roman Swiss whom the French have seen fit to honour with a Prix Goncourt. Roman Swiss being the proper way to describe a French speaking Swiss, from the western part of the country which used once upon a time to be part of Roman Gaul. He appears to be a Catholic so maybe the Roman Swiss are not Calvinists.

The book itself is, in some ways, very much of a type with the other two Goncourts that I have read recently: a fascination with cutting & blades (in this case cut throat razors), sex (in a sort of detail which decent Anglo Saxons eschew), the macabre and death. It was sold as a study of someone who grew up fatally damaged by an overbearing father. I was a bit lazy about looking up the words that I did not know and so have probably missed a good deal, but, nevertheless, I am left with the thought that the author read a bit of psychology about overbearing fathers and then built his novel around what he had read. While there is much of interest in the novel, the basic story line of fatal damage seems contrived.

I share one snippet which particularly caught my eye. It seems that outside the Lausanne crematorium there is a Café Du Crém, a regular café but with a bit of space at the back where family parties emerging from the crem. can assemble for the ceremony of glass of wine with slice of cake. Front reserved for locals. So much more civilised than the arrangement at Randalls, our local crem., where the only refreshment opportunity is the outrageously grand and expensive red brick pile known as the Woodlands Park Hotel (http://www.woodlandsparkhotelcobham.com/). Not the sort of place for a ceremonial glass at all - not unless, that is, there are rather a lot of you. And pubs are not much use for the purpose either. So I am very taken with the idea of a reasonably plain, French (or Roman Swiss) style café, just outside the crem. gates. It would be such a sensible arrangement.

I would guess that having the café run as part of the crem. operation itself would not really work. Such a place would be a bit institutionalised, perhaps too much like a National Trust canteen, and you would lack the leavening of locals and non-crem business to lighten the tone. Furthermore, you want a boundary or transition zone between the world of the quick and the world of the dead and a café inside the crem. would not be that.