Cécile de Partouche/Grasset
“The size of our breasts” by Agnès Jaoui was published by Grasset in September 2024.
BOOKS – Sally Rooney and her two brothers with thwarted loves are a hit in bookstores. Gaël FayeRiad Sattouf and the recent South Korean Nobel Prize winner Han KangAlso. Faced with the avalanche of bestsellers that appeared during literary return and the last flagship releases of the fall, it’s difficult to venture off the beaten track.
HuffPost helps you see things more clearly and offers you a series of five novels that you have undoubtedly missed in recent months. On the program: an Italian saga, the moving childhood of Agnès Jaoui in images and the crazy story of LSD, but not only that. Follow the leader.
1. The life that remainsRoberta Recchia
We are in the 1950s, in Rome. It was at this time that Marisa met Stelvio. The couple lives a perfect love story until the day their 16-year-old daughter is murdered. Everything changes. As the couple falls apart, the mother sinks into grief in front of those close to her, including her niece Miriam. The young woman did not tell him, but she was there the day of the tragedy.
A phenomenon since its release in Italy, where it sold more than 100,000 copies, Roberta Recchia’s novel goes from romance to thriller, portraying the portraits of three women at three different ages. A first book acclaimed by critics, and translated in France by Istya & Cie editions by Elsa Damien, Elena Ferrante’s translator.
2. The size of our breastsAgnès Jaoui
Once upon a time there was Agnès Jaoui, or rather the childhood of Agnès Jaoui. Firstly, the playground injuries, his two great girlfriends and his move from Sarcelles to the very chic 5th arrondissement. And then comes the tragedy: that day when, during a vacation in Israel, an older uncle took her by the hand, dragged her behind the house and raped her.
In this autobiographical text accompanied by delicate watercolors by her lifelong friend Cécile Partouche, Agnès Jaoui writes at a child’s level to recount with the spicy humor that we know of this period of her life during which she was well difficult to find your way. It’s very touching and moving, sometimes even hilarious.
3. LSD: The night I never got outChristophe Tison
This is the “ most intimate secret, his deepest handicap »: at 15, Christophe Tison swallowed a blot of LSD. The experience lasted only one night, but never left the journalist, now 63 years old. His memory, certainly. Its consequences, above all. The flashbacks pursue him, causing him to dissociate and derealize.
But the strong point of this book is not its testimony. No, it is the filigree account that he gives of the absolutely incredible and little-known history of this drug, which he goes back to the origins of. It talks about Nazis, the CIA and even poisoned French villages, before falling into the hands of hippies. To be discovered by Editions de la Goutte d’or.
4. It’s all coming back to me nowJean-Michel Fortier
Head to the other side of the Atlantic, to Canada. We are in 2003, near Quebec, and Colin, a 16 year old boy (soon to be 17), is certain of one thing: the songs of Céline Dion, his idol, are addressed to him. “ Her voice pierces all my armor and reaches a place that does not exist without her, a heart that she invented for me », assures the young man.
The problem, he says, is that “ normal boys » don’t listen to Celine Dion. In his fourth book, Quebec novelist Jean-Michel Fortier paints the portrait of a sensitive, ordinary and endearing teenager, against the backdrop of coming out at the very end of childhood. All accompanied by hits from the Canadian star, as its title reminds us (a nod to It’s All Coming Back to Me Now).
5. Enjoy yesterday?Faïza Guène
Maybe you missed it this summer, but Doria has returned to bookstores. The heroine of Faïza Guène, born in 2004 in Enjoy tomorrow, is no longer a teenager. Twenty years later, she is a hairdresser (unemployed) and mother of a 7-year-old boy, Adam. She has just separated from the child’s father, a Jura man who converted to Islam and is obsessed with North African women.
From the racism of in-laws to the omnipresence of social networks, including the gentrification of her city of Seine-Saint-Denis: Doria comments with the same chat on her daily life today. Or is it ours? Faïza Guène summons, here, her heroine to draw conclusions from a life in which everyone risks finding themselves in 2024.
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