Clay
A Novel
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- 10,99 €
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- 10,99 €
Publisher Description
In this captivating Faulknerian tale of love, masculinity, and vengeance, tensions boil over in a rural mountain community whose able-bodied men have left to fight in World War I.
In the heart of Cantal, in the heat of the summer of 1914, the men resigned themselves to going off to fight, far away. Joseph, just 15 years old, must take care of the family farm with his mother, his grandmother, and Leonard, an old neighbor who has become his friend. On the property next door, Valette, kept away from the war due to an atrophied hand, dwells on his grudges and his rage. And now he has to take in his brother's wife and daughter, who have sought refuge with him. The arrival of the two women will end up upsetting a hitherto immutable order and awakening buried passions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bouysse (Wind Drinkers) serves up an evocative tale of romance and horror in rural France during WWI. Drafted into the French army, Victor Lary leaves behind his wife, Mathilde, and their 15-year-old son, Joseph, at the family farm. Though Joseph worries about his father, he adapts to being the man of the house, and he forgets his anxiety when he meets Anna, an attractive teenager who's staying with her uncle Vallete, the Larys' neighbor, while her own father is off to war. Joseph and Anna keep their burgeoning relationship secret from the adults, particularly because they're afraid of Vallette, a "violent man, snide and envious," who is unfit for military service because of a deformed hand. Vallette more than justifies the suspicion and fear he arouses, as he engages in bestiality and lusts after his niece. The villain is strictly a one-dimensional character, and the narrative offers few surprises on its way toward a grisly climax, but Bouysse vividly portrays the pastoral scenery while sustaining a sense of foreboding (a moth drinking nectar from a flower is described as "a tiny drunkard powerless to abandon the source of its pleasure"). Readers will find much to admire.
