Red is my Heart by Antoine Laurain and Le SONNEUR

Red is my Heart by Antoine Laurain and LE SONNEUR

French fiction

Original title – Et mon cœur se serra

Translator – Jane Aitken

Source personal copy

I have reviewed 6 earlier books by the French writer Antoine Laurain he is a writer I love his books are great for an evening read he always take you away into his world whether it is having the presidents hat , a notebook or an old pop group there is always a hook that its the start of the journey in his books and the same is the case here we have a man that is sitting to write a letter to a girlfriend that has just left him. But the wonderful thing in the book is he has teamed up with the French street artist LE SONNEUR who has provided119 illustrations that us just three colours Black red and White to capture the despair of a relationship breaking they mix wonderfully with the inner story of this man’s despair at the relationship break up.

Today I posted

you a letter, a very beautiful letter, three carefully drafted pages written with a medium-nib Cross fountain pen in black ink. When I went to write your address on the envelope, my hand trembled and I invented a new one. An address that does not exist, a random number in an imaginary street which I placed in an arrondissement on the other side of the city 8 Rue Pierre-François-Flarmentier, Paris 15. I posted the letter in the yellow postbox.

You will never read

The opening as he writes a letter she will never read to him

He opens by writing a letter our narrator knows that she will never read and ponders that has he changed maybe the watch needs changing a new watch may change times maybe make some new times? All this is counterpointed with LE SONNEuR Illustrations that capture his a broken jigsaw, a couple parting the black is the male and the red is his lost lover in the illustrations and this really works as the book moves on as the hope of reconciling the relationship is ever further away. The memories of that time together ness are that shop that coffee shop the echoes of past time at one point he imagines he is in her apartment and says if I am here in my mind I can be there in my body. But as the illustrations show he may need a ladder to get to the bit of her that remains. He goes to New York this is where fact and fiction blur as the narrator sees a sign saying MON AMOUR is this fate no that is an art piece by LE SONNEUR.

Alain-Fournier is eighteen, and a student at the Lycke 1akanal when he crosses paths with the beautiful stranger. Shortly after the writer’s death, his friend and school. fellow Jacques Rivière said, “That brief encounter was the defining moment of his life and a source of immense passion, sadness and rapture.’

Without knowing who she is, Alain-Fournier follows Yvonne Toussaint de Quièvrecourt as she walks towards the Seine. She boards a Bateau-Mouche and alights at Quai de la Tournelle to return to her parent’s apartment at 12 Boulevard Saint Germain, still pursued at a distance by the lovestruck young man. In the days that follow, he keeps returning to that address to try to see her again. Finally, on the morning of 10 June, he spots her at the window of the apartment. The girl, surprised to see him, smiles warmly.

 

I always love books that deal with Memory and how we deal with it. Such as this is about the loss of a relationship. That shows what remains it s like that shell is a beautiful but hollow object.A relationship that has broken what remains is the moments here but as time drifts that is what the Illustrations capture so well the love of the women is like a balloon drifting away on the breeze always too far away just out of grasp. or a level t to be reached by a ladder that is just to short. This is a very quick read but it is one that has just the right mix of visual and narrative. THE embers of what was once there are being blown on to stop them from going out but there is always the chance to start a new fire as the last piece of heat ebbs away. I love Laurain he isn’t a complex writer. But he is one that manages to capture a lot here, especially if he has got that post-break-up feeling well. His book are a journey for the reader and this is in that gap in between those loves that void and how we fill it. Have you read any of his books? I have included a couple of  illustrations from this great book.

Winston’s score – A. This is another gem from a writer I have loved since I. first read him nearly ten years ago.