David Foenkinos, Nos séparations
Nos séparations (2008)
is the seventh novel by David Foenkinos, who has since ascended to literary stardom in France with his
2009 bestseller La Délicatesse. These
two novels have much in common: romantic relationships are centre stage; the
narrator (and thus, we suppose, the author) has a penchant for quirky details
and aphoristic statements; both novels dwell on the sadnesses of life while
finding humour in every corner of it.
The narrator in this case is Fritz, whose name does not pass
without comment, either from him or from the majority of the characters to whom
he introduces himself. The story he tells, from a temporal perspective which is
often ambiguous, is essentially his life story. It is, in the first instance,
the title of the novel that encourages the reader to see the story as a series
of separations between Fritz and Alice, his first love. The pair love each
other, but cannot manage to stay together. Their first real separation is
comic, brought about by a disastrous first visit to Alice ’s parents. Their second is melodramatic;
it is the third that strikes us as most realistic, poignant in its very
banality: the unfaithful wife who, ultimately, will not leave her husband.
The reader might judge, though, that it is Fritz’s attitude
to life that dooms him to see his own as a series of separations and failures.
The novel opens with this reflection:
“J’ai
l’impression que la mort est un regard qui me guette en permanence. Chacun de
mes gestes est voué à être analysé par une force supérieure, cette force qui
est mon futur d’homme décomposé.”
(I have an impression of death as a gaze that is
permanently fixed on me. Every one of my actions is fated to be analysed by a
higher force, the force that is my future as a decomposed body.)
Fritz is haunted not only by death, but by posterity. In his
job at Larousse, working on the dictionary, he enjoys playing with obscure words,
but is even more fascinated by the biographical entries he composes. In a
characteristic touch, Foenkinos periodically breaks up the main narrative with one
of these summarised lives. Almost all tell of a failure, or a career cut short
in some way: the writer who jumped out of a window after deciding his work was
mediocre; the deserting soldier; the sailor who died on a desert island. The
word raté (failed, missed) occurs several
times in the novel, particularly towards the end: Iris “savait très bien qu’elle
avait tout raté”; Fritz and Alice entertain the thought that their children
might make a success of “ce que nous avions raté”. Death and failure weigh
heavily on the characters in the latter part of the novel, with three scenes
taking place in a cemetery – though the last of these is predominantly hopeful.
These heavy themes, however, are treated with a light touch;
Nos séparations made me laugh out
loud on several occasions. Alice ’s
father, though a caricature, delights by his unpleasantness; and the
tie-selling episode is a classic piece of Foenkinos eccentricity. The combination
of the author’s eye for the particular (often relating to parts of the body or
movements, as in Fritz’s first impression of Alice ) and his feel for the universal creates
a style that is touching, witty and memorable. The particular is the human
attempt to live in the moment – often through sex, which is closely linked to
the focus on parts of the body – while the universal reminds us that we cannot.
Fritz tells us all this on page one,
in fact: “Quand je m’éveille auprès d’une femme, je contemple son oreille, et
j’essaye de photographier mentalement l’éclat de sa particularité. Je sais
qu’un jour je serai allongé, immobile et face à la mort, et qu’il ne me restera
plus que ces souvenirs de la sensualité passée.”
(When I wake up beside a woman, I gaze at her ear, and I try
to mentally photograph the glow of her individualness. I know that one day I
will be lying immobile, facing death, and nothing will be left to me but these
memories of past pleasure.)
Fritz wants to classify and define everything, to put things in boxes. As Céline tells him bitterly, he wants to be "un jeune homme rangé". But things that are in boxes are dead. In the end, Fritz's gift to posterity is not the book on Schopenhauer that he dreams of writing, but his son, the not-so-subtly named Roman. Nos séparations ends with a meeting, and we realise that perhaps it has been as much about meetings as partings all along.
