Book Review: Double Vie by Pierre Assouline

 

One of the too many to count literary encounters I experienced this year was the discovery of Pierre Assouline. While looking at the French library for Le Nageur, I stumbeled upon another of his books, Sigmaringen and it was enough to add him on the list of authors to follow. 

Although I still haven´t read Le Nageur, I took my time to discover other of his titles, read in the original French language - which I, of course, love. 

Double Vie is at the first sight a history of an illicit relationship. Rémi Laredo, a Jew of Sephardic origin, a specialist in cave art, caught in an unhappy marriage with his successful catholic wife and lawyer, Marie Rabaut-Pelletier. His escape is an illicit relationship with Victoria, whom he meets in inconventional places, based on a secret discrete code set between the two but mostly controlled by her. He is a dreamer, obsessed about images of certain women. If not Victoria, there would be another women, there is the image who nurtures his fantasy. Most of the book is in fact a long monologue describing his connections with women, told by him, 

But there is also a part which enfolds as a mystery: after the airbags where Victoria and Rémi were enjoying their illicit relationship dangerouls popped up, Victoria disappeared without a trace. Rémi is desperately trying to find her. He even pays a visit as a patient to her husband´s medical office, but there is not too much to find out. Mysteriously again, his wife starts to talk with him about a diary of a woman whose husband want to use it as a proof for asking for a divorce. Rémi criticizes her for doing it, but illicitly also tries to have a look at it.

The search for Victoria continues until the end of the book, creating confusion or sending the curious reader on a fake pathway. 

Double Vie is a book of many topics - arts being also one of them - which intertwin and spread into the story as the shreds of a coloruful caleidoscope. Sometimes they are just this, shreds, but often they are share information about unfolding events or characters. 

Rating: 4 stars