Book Review: Les Gens du Balto by Faïza Guène

 

One of the reasons I love to read as much as I can from an author is the chance of discovering within familiar circumstances - like topics, vocabulary, ideas - new and interesting literary approaches and play of styles. After my first Faïza Guène, Discretion - read in English translation - I continue with other two books by her, in the original French, though. Kiffe Kiffe Demain was unexpectedly humorous although playing hard on topics such as immigration and the life in the suburbs (quartier). Les Gens du Balto, goes one step further, creating a novel played on multiple voices with a crime plot.

One thing about reading a book in translation is that there are a lot of local nuances that one can taste only in the original language. Kiffe Kiffe and Les Gens...too, do have a very colourful vocabulary which me, as a French speaker I love to read in original. It has to do with a pleasure of reading and hearing words that you relate to, and slang is generally a very localised take on language. Thus, for anyone looking to update and upgrade their intimate knowledge of the language, Guène´s books are valuable source of information.

In Les Gens du Balto, a large cast of characters and their parents is investigated by the police in the case of a murder of a bar owner. Several are teenage voices, others are adults or their immigrants parents. With the usual humorous take, she created a murder story with a unique background. Every crime story is special and there are so many specific elements coming together - I am reading right now The Trees by Percival Everett which also has a crime setting but it goes far beyond it - which are pratically relevant for another understory line. The author manages to coordinate all the individual voices skillfully which supports the story development.

Discovering new young writer may be such a refreshing feeling, especially when one realizes they bring such a new take and approach on ideas like identity and belonging. By creating stories around them, the topics descend from the literary, philosophic and theoretic realm, to take a place within the everyday mentalities swift. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Kiffe Kiffe Demain

Faïza Guène is the voice of a new generations of writers writing in French, allowing the identities to permeate irreverently the unique discourse dictated by the elites. The counter-discourse of authors like her challenges the rhetoric aimed at imposing the definition of the ´good citizen´.

Guène´s Discretion was my first encounter with the work of this author, who started to publish from a very early age. In comparison, Kiffe Kiffe Demain is more direct and less elaborate, nevertheless echoing the France of the suburbs, through the eyes of Doria, 12 years old Muslim girl living in the suburbs of Paris. 

Her mother is illiterate, but working hard to learn how to read and therefore find a better paid job. The father went back to Morocoo and married a woman that can give him a child, preferably a boy. The neighbours do equally have stories to tell: one is enjoying the 6 months during which her husband is spending time to the other wife, in the home country; there are potential matches she is trying to find for her mother and boys ending up in prison. 

In Arabic, kif-kif means ´same old´, but the title is less pessimistic as we might expect. Instead, Doria´s voice - very well represented - is a focus on the life as it is. No ´French dream´ or immigrant´s sadness. A teenage girl can see the world through the ´quartier´ where she is living, without expectations therefore without disappointment. It´s a humorous take on life that I love. After all, isn´t the life short enough to cry about its shortcomings?

Her matter-of-factly attitude and the hilarious way of sharing her everyday story leaves you with a big smile on your face, while introducing to the reader a world as any other world. The stories though are part of an ambiance and of a context, and their unicity resides in the story themselves. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

Book Review: Discretion by Faïza Guène translated by Sarah Ardizzone

 

One of the winners of English PEN Award, Discretion (in the original French, La Discrétion) by Faïza Guène, translated from French by Sarah Ardizzone, shed light to the episode of French colonial past in Algeria, through the story of a family of Algerian origin living in France. 

Yamina moved from Algeria to France, as newly wed with an Algerian man working in the construction industry. Daughter of a fighter for Algeria´s independence. After a rough start, now in her 70s she learned to be content together with her daughters and son. It is not necessarily what she would call home, but as she will ackwnoledge by the end of the story, home is where her family is. However, her children, born in France, with long summer vacations spent in their home country, do react to the everyday shift in race relationships and daily racism. They cannot be content, no matter how much they love their family. As many of the second-generation immigrants, they refuse to choose silence. 

The story of the children, each different although not excessively revolutionary - as the publishing industry may expect sometimes from characters belonging to this category - in their separate note from the majority they live in, reflects different fragments of immigrant existence. Yamina, a girl and a woman and a mother who saw too much, but survives life with grace, modestly and humbly. It´s one of my favorite women characters in a long time, for her gentle soul and natural wisdom of accepting fate.

Although I rarely read books written in French in English - or any kind of - translation, I can only admire the beautiful rendition by Sarah Ardizzone, a well-deserved. There are a couple of Algerian writers I´ve descovered lately, but Guène is one of the brilliant, and hopefully I will read some of her other books soon. 

Rating: 4.5 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review