Silence and anger It is the second novel in the new series of books that he has published Pierre Lemaitre, planned as a tetralogy under the title The glorious years. The first one was the wide world. This is my review, whose reading may not be convenient for those who have not read the first.
Silence and anger — Synopsis
After the first title set in the period immediately after the Second World War, we now go to the Paris of 1952, where we meet again with the peculiar brothers Jean, François and Hélène Pelletier, who lost Étienne, the most charismatic, in the wide world. They all moved to the French capital from Beirut and face the challenges posed by their adopted city.
Helen has known how to position himself as reporter at the Journal du Soir, François's newspaper, even though it may be against him. But it is good, although his relationship with the newspaper director will also contribute. So he manages to leave Chevrigny, a town in deep France, to do a commissioned report. However, the construction of a dam threatens with making the place disappear. Hélène will witness the human dramas of those who will be expelled forever from their homes and, there, her life will take an unexpected turn that may have undesired consequences. But she will also have the help and support from a colleague that, perhaps, wants to become something more.
Meanwhile, François, who already has more tables as a journalist and continues investigating the murder of an actress which took place in the first title, he also wants to find out who he really is Nine, su booths, a deaf but very determined young woman who seems to hide more than one secret.
And finally, there is Jeans, the firstborn of weak character and canceled by Geneviève, its unbearable and tyrannical wife, now pregnant again and completely unaware of her little daughter Colette, the only one who seems to bring out the best side of her disturbed, dangerous and violent father. The inauguration of what they promise to be successful department store will become their litmus test, perhaps destined for the most absolute failure when their workers put themselves into action. strike for the abuse of the director.
And, in the middle of all the conflicts, parents, Louis and Angèle Pelletier, they try to keep the family afloat, although Louis undertakes a sporting adventure with little future in which he tries to launch the career of a young boxer.
Silence and anger - Review
Again, and like the first title, almost 600 pages await us when we begin this novel, but, also again, Lemaitre continues to be so precise, such a good narrator and composer of period settings and portraits that we turn the pages without wanting to.. We read again a story full of images, reflections, social criticism and black humor, where the hypocrisy and miseries of a society that tries to cover them up with mechanisms that have not changed over time continue to stand out, a society that is represented in the Pelletier brothers, personifications of the inconsistency and duality of the human being, in which nothing is black or white, but gray or very gray.
The trademark mastery of this author continues to be undeniable when it comes to telling stories as if he were telling them face to face in a conversation at the bar, adding comments about his characters and ironically highlighting their faults. So we have that again such a well-constructed amalgamation of melodrama, comedy, caricature —or rather a complete exaggeration— and blackness which is repeated in the titles of the previous trilogy started with See you up there.
So we want to continue to find out what is going to happen to the Pelletiers without making major value judgments and less about justice regarding their behavior, but with the sole intention of accompanying them and being witnesses of that time and how they have decided to live it.
Pierre Lemaitre
Pierre Lemaitre is a Parisian, from 1951, and one of the most important french authors of recent years. He started as a writer at a late age (he published his first title at the age of 56), but he has managed to achieve successes and awards and accumulate readers in the millions in a short time. In 2013 he took the Goncourt, the most prestigious award in French literature, for See you up there. This fact put it at the top of critics and sales. This novel is the first of the trilogy The children of disaster, that make up The colors of the fire y The mirror of our sorrows.
Translated into more than thirty languages, his work is completed by those starring the commander Camille Verhoeven and other titles like Wedding dress, Three days and a life, Inhuman resources, The great serpent o Passionate Dictionary of the Crime Novel.