Between family stories, murky investigations, adventures in hostile environments, and portraits of ordinary lives, this selection brings together ten novels to discover during the literary season. Véronique Ovaldé explores a mother’s silences, Jean-Philippe Toussaint weaves together corruption and grief, while Claudie Gallay takes readers to the frozen Alaska of 1925. Captivating and distinctive books for a varied October reading list.
Vivre sans bonheur et n’en point dépérir, by Véronique Ovaldé
In this delicate family novel, Véronique Ovaldé revisits the life of a mother whose youth was marked by sacrifice. At thirteen, instead of continuing her education, she leaves the Picardy countryside to work as a maid in the Paris region. Later, she does not choose the gentle, cultured man her relatives might have imagined for her, but an authoritarian, jealous craftsman who has returned from Algeria.
The narrator, nicknamed “la Petite,” tells this story from a perspective that evolves over time. As children, the girls reproached their mother for her submissiveness and evasions. As an adult, the novelist understands her silences and compromises differently. With its digressions and reversals, the story paints a tender portrait of a woman whose strength is revealed in all that she endured.
La Hantise, by Jean-Philippe Toussaint
Jean-Philippe Toussaint brings back Jean Detrez, an official at the European Commission, in a contemporary noir novel. The plot brings together the worlds of blockchain, lobbyists, and corruption, gradually building tension around the investigation. Political and financial machinations rub shoulders with the character’s private questions.
For this story is about more than its thriller elements. The loss of a father, the risks taken by whistleblowers, and romantic relationships all play an important part in the narrative. This combination of suspense and reflection on grief promises a read that is both taut and moving.
Choses que je croyais perdues, by Clémence Mélois
After a breakup, what should you do with the things that remain? In this book, Clémence Mélois turns her attention to the belongings we put away in boxes and sometimes think we have forgotten. As they are packed up, ordinary items become imbued with memories: they call to mind moments lived, habits, and a story that has just changed.
The subject gives the author an opportunity to blend humor, memory, and emotion. Objects become quiet witnesses to a shared life, but also starting points for a fresh perspective on what remains after a breakup. An accessible, delicate text, imbued with the charm of small things.
Heures sauvages, by Marie Petitcuénot
In 1974, in Naples, Marina Abramović staged a performance in which she placed herself at the public’s disposal, surrounded by numerous objects. Some were mundane, such as a feather or a rose, but there was also a pistol. Marie Petitcuénot revisits this harrowing experience and conveys its intensity in a taut narrative about art and its limits.
The book seeks to convey what this performance may have put at stake: the vulnerability of the body, the audience’s responsibility, and the boundary between creation and violence. By giving this episode a literary form, the author invites readers to reflect on the power of an artwork and the reactions it provokes.
La Promesse des chiens, by Claudie Gallay
We head to Nome, Alaska, in the heart of the winter of 1925. The coastal town is cut off by ice when a diphtheria epidemic threatens its residents. To bring them the serum they need, teams of sled dogs must cover a long distance in extreme conditions. Claudie Gallay turns this historical episode into a gripping adventure, where every leg of the journey matters.
The author of Déferlantes knows how to convey the harshness of landscapes and the vulnerability of human beings in the face of the elements. Here, the cold, the urgency, and the vastness of the territory give the story the pace of a race against time. An adventure story that foregrounds endurance and solidarity.
La Rue, by Robert Seethaler
Robert Seethaler observes an Austrian street and the people who bring it to life. The secondhand bookseller, the baker, the doctor, the priest, and the residents of a retirement home make up a cast of ordinary characters, captured in their daily lives. With light strokes, the novel reveals their habits, their connections, and the events that gradually change their surroundings.
The threat of property developers hangs over this little world: the street may soon be transformed by new building projects. Through this polyphonic chronicle, the author explores the value of a neighborhood and how a community takes shape. His attentive gaze gives depth to modest lives, never reducing them to mere silhouettes.
Les Agitées, by Camille Zabka
Camille Zabka’s novel focuses on the women confined to the Ville-Évrard asylum at their families’ request, among them Camille Claudel in 1913. In the present day, Olga, the wife of a psychiatrist who lives on the grounds, finds herself confronted with this history. The site’s past seeps into her present and fuels a plot in which the memory of the former residents remains vivid.
By bringing different eras into conversation, the author evokes the atmosphere of the buildings and the fate of those whom people sought to silence or marginalize. A gripping and moving novel, Les Agitées examines confinement, decisions made in the name of families, and the way places preserve traces of those who have lived in them.
Le Fardeau, by Matthieu Niango
At twenty-three, Matthieu Niango learns that his mother was adopted. This revelation leads him to conduct an in-depth investigation into his origins. He then discovers that she was born, at the end of 1943, in a Belgian Lebensborn, one of the Nazi institutions established to carry out eugenic projects.
Starting from a family story, the author traces a path back to a little-known and terrible chapter in European history. Le Fardeau combines personal research with historical discovery, while showing what the past can pass on to future generations. A well-researched and moving account that gives the search for origins a collective dimension.
Toutes les vies de Théo, by Nathalie Azoulai
Théo, a Catholic art historian, and Léa, a Jewish lawyer, are a happy couple until the events of October 7, 2023, upend their everyday lives. Nathalie Azoulai places this love story at the heart of sensitive political and social questions, including antisemitism and communalism.
The novel explores what happens when convictions, affiliations, and events in the outside world enter the private sphere. Without reducing its characters to their origins, it follows the tensions running through their relationship and the different facets of their identities. A subtle and compelling read, attentive both to contemporary divisions and to the bonds that unite two people.
Le Chant du prophète, by Paul Lynch
In this dystopia, Ireland descends into tyranny. Alice, whose trade-unionist husband has been arrested by a secret police force, tries to protect her children as arbitrariness and violence spread. The political threat becomes a concrete danger to the family, and every decision becomes a matter of survival.
Paul Lynch constructs an oppressive story about the gradual collapse of freedom and the consequences of authoritarian rule. At the heart of this powerful political fiction, a mother tries to protect her loved ones in a society where all points of reference are disappearing. An intense novel that conveys, at close range, the price of resistance and protecting those closest to us.
