Opponent (Emmanuel Carrère ) 
Hello to those facts that fascinate various hello to those they worry Hello to zotres Before starting writing this post, I knew that the preamble would be long and detailed. I already had the time frame in the head but I did not imagine for one second that I encounter a complication even before the draft.
Context For the first time since I created this blog, it was hard to make my traditional introductory hello. Sometimes I lack inspiration, but never before had I felt discomfort to write the first thing (or inspired not) that came into my head. This time I biased and I wrote the second thing that crossed my head. It is difficult to say whether to consider this book.
In fact, I did not read it. Upon its release, I remember the controversy surrounding the process of
Emmanuel Carrère and the interest of telling this story both fascinating and sordid, tragic and unbelievable. Being neither a fan nor the scandals of various facts, I had quickly concluded that this book was not for me and, having read and loved
Other lives than mine, after reading and diversely appreciated The Moustache
, I wanted my first position. Yes, I would read other Carrère but not this one. And yet I have my house for months, demonstrated on a shelf next to
class snow (which I will wait before reading).
When I had a discussion with a colleague about this author and she told me she had read nothing of him but was very tempted to find the opponent, I proposed lend. Miraculously, I thought about it (with pride!) One morning last week and I stuffed into my bag to bring.
Parapraxis or not, who knows, it is certain that even this morning I forgot strangely at me and deprivation
With the superb novel by Alice Ferney
and so I found the bus with nothing to if not read my diary, some text messages (and precision
liliB few sexto too) and ... The opponent
. So I opened and I did let go.
The subject
On January 9, 1993, Jean-Claude Romand kills
his wife and two children, his parents before taking pills and set fire to his house. He will live.
For 18 years this secretive man, somewhat transparent, had succeeded in making everyone around her believe that he possessed a medical degree and was a researcher at the WHO in Switzerland. In fact, it was none of that, passing her days in her car and lived in defrauding the members of his family he had left dangling investment windfall.
My opinion
My refusal to read this book lies less in the highly glaucous appearance due to a variety of double embarrassment and questions that provoked in me the idea to make the Recounting one hand and read the other.
Without getting into a self-analysis bazaar and highly immodest, I think there's Romand in me (as in each (e) it says) and if most aspects of his personality to make me be a contemptible, despicable, inexcusable in every way, revolting (etc.), immeasurably loose (a word that appears for the first time in the final pages of the book). The fact remains that it is a part of him that I understand. If I know (thankfully!) That my personality is in many ways the antithesis of what led to Romand killed his family, I understand very well, however some features of his character that led to tragedy, or at least have made the circumstances that led to the tragedy possible.
There is a word I've never found in the 200 pages of Carrere is the word indecisive. It seems to me evident from the first pages of the novel that is due to an explosive cocktail of fear (panic) to deceive, deny the conflict (of terror against the war?) Of depressive tendency and velléitarisme deep (even abulia) that Romand put the finger in the gears without ever having enough willpower and energy to remove it.
I see this phenomenon fascinating and exciting and even the trigger, the starting point All subsequent lies and the fact that it has preferred Romand fouling rather than come out of it is an aspect of the story much more interesting than its fatal conclusion. In this case, it is a "no action". How to call it otherwise? not even a decision not to do, just letting time slip, waiting until it is too late to being unable to decide anything, a kind of mental tetany, priming a bomb inducing delayed slow suicide and passive ... During the trial, the accused tried to justify and rationalize this starting point by a new avalanche of lies too absurd to insulting its victims. Why did he not want to say that at one time (several actually), it was like a rabbit in front of the headlights of a car unable to move.
This psychological dimension and analytical causes fascinated me and knowing even before reading the book that fascinates me is one of the reasons I did not want to open it. Romand's personality, however, is far to fascinate me. I think the sentiment that has dominated all my reading is the total disregard, without the slightest shred of early commencement of compassion, a final decision based on the profound conviction of the absolute cowardice and falsity of man. On the equally obvious to me that he never wanted to commit suicide though may say (though perhaps thinks himself), he feels no repentance and faith he claims to feel that all these acts and words are calculated, displaced indecent. If
Emmanuel Carrère sometimes can suggest or evoke some of these points even as many questions and mysteries, it also evokes its opposite, the possibility of a form of sincerity, repentance, grief experienced for what he has done more than what happened to him ...
And I come (finally!) To the 2nd aspect of the double embarrassment that I mentioned above: I do not always perceive the views of the author. His opinion, yes, more or less (although this is not the subject of the book ...) but the views he wished to adopt in his book, no. And that's a huge paradox or even a tour de force of the author, because if it is something that has really been a problem from the point of intellectual and even moral in the case (again before even opening the book), on the other hand, I think it was almost impossible to do otherwise, to tell this story differently.
The author himself is struck for several years to develop this pitfall of having interrupted the writing of his book before continuing. He constantly uses a method somewhat similar to that given later in
More lives than mine : lack of perspective, he contextualizes his story, he punctuates punctuating the narrative with references to his own existence, its own actions or thoughts. In writing the above, I realize that I have not done anything in writing this review.
As for the inevitable "how is this possible?" Yes, obviously, everyone wondered question and there, other discomfort ... Who thought I mentioned the series of murders and not the 18 years total lie? In the end, it is surely the most amazing in this story because to achieve a carnage, insanity of one man is enough. To lie his life to this point, we must contrast the gullibility, passivity of an entire family circle that never called the office, has never set foot in a statement, never asked a never heard a question or answer? This dimension of existence Romand oscillates between comedy and pathos, and finally it is less the lies that leave themselves incredulous that the fact so many people have the Gobes for so long. And again the author ignores the word "communication" but essential for his analysis that reality with dramatic consequences. What is this couple? What blinders were his parents? Which led collective blindness to 5 people to death. The fascination
amazed that anyone can experience some aspects of the case Romand is the same type as the one we feel when thinking of the husband Courgeau and again, stupor lies less in the behavior of a hallucinatory mother in the fact that a husband, family, friends see nothing.
In the end, I can send a reproach to the author complains that he has also addressed itself (to prevent others from possibly do next? It does not work, the proof ...). Intentionally or not,
Emmanuel Carrère Romand makes the hero he has always fantasized of being. The author tells the story becomes "her" story and not that of his victims relegated to the role of secondary characters and who, by definition, not speaking. So why give it to the murderer? Why publish his letters? Why is the highlight and not to take testimony from parents, brothers and sisters of victims as he obligingly raised his? As he met in prison (one time course).
Maybe he esssayé? Maybe they did not wish to meet him? But then he would have had to say, give them the right to remain silent rather than impose on them.
Conclusion A disturbing book but certainly stunning, intelligent, brilliant, perfectly controlled (but sometimes less is more human control). A book on the edge of which the author comes out very well. But I can only repeat my two questions:
Why has he written and why we read?
film adaptation of Nicole Garcia with Daniel Auteuil and Geraldine Pailhas. Not seen. No desire.
Hello queens and kings forgotten (s) 
