Sedira’s novel is based on and inspired by a real murder
that occurred in Haute-Savoie, France. I
had actually heard of the crime because Curioustystream has a show called Crime
Scene Solvers that did an episode about this murder. The victims were the Flactif family – parents
and three children. They were new
residents to a small village and stood out because of their wealth. One also
presumes they stood out because the husband was black, though the show never
addresses this. (The show seems to have
been French dubbed into English for the British market).
I picked
this book up because of the review in the TLS which praised the book and that
little part of my mind that was “oh, I remember this crime”.
Seriously,
Penguin needs to translate more Sedira’s work pronto because short novel packs
a punch.
If you
are an American, you might understand if I say this takes some of the points of
James Baldwin’s “Stranger in the Village” while telling of a murder in a very small town. Sedira uses the voice of the partner of the
murderer, and, therefore, can address the issue that as she says in the
afterword was left out in the reports of the murder – racism.
The use
of a long time resident of a town, a woman who can see the direct racism in
some cases, but not the subtle racism that happens. And so the reader is asked to consider
whether the crime and the jealousy that preceded would have occurred if the
husband had not been Black and if they had not been outsiders (foreigners in
the sense of being new to the village). Anna,
the narrator, isn’t portrayed as a outright racist, and at points Sedira
The
crime is juxtaposed with the pastoral setting that Sedira describes in such a
lovely and powerful way in the opening section of the novel. But then the peaceful and beautiful setting
gives way to dark things, much like what happens in the town - the friendship (or what seems like
friendship) that gives way to darker impulses that are tied into issues such as
class jealousy, racism, and anti-immigration.
It’s a brilliant book that does what brilliant books should do -makes
you think and examine society and yourself.
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