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BOOKS – The click. As part of the literary re-entry, Amelia Nothomb publishes his twenty-ninth novel with Albin Michel editions, this Thursday, August 20. It’s called Aerostats and risks awakening in each reader a nostalgic feeling for the day when everything changed in their relationship to books.
Her story is that of a young woman called Ange Daulnoy. A philology student in Brussels, she was hired by a father of a good family to treat the alleged dyslexia of her son, Pie. Passionate about weapons, he doesn’t like to read. At least, until the day when his tutor advises him toIliade.
“It’s so awesome,” he exclaims. Finally a story that gives itself great resources. ” This is the revelation. Over the course of one night, the 16-year-old devoured Homer’s poem. He asks for more. That’s it, he has a taste for reading.
Reading a book can be hard work when you’re a kid. Compulsory readings at school do nothing. Those offered to us at Christmas or on our birthdays, either. As in the case of the young hero of Amélie Nothomb, sometimes a book is enough for that to change. Adolescent or child, nowadays adult readers deliver us the novel which changed everything in them.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
Emery has long hated reading. “I read a lot, especially through school, parents and the education I received,” he recalls. But it pissed me off. ” Reading was synonymous with constraint.
One summer evening, in the Gers, his brother handed him The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Czech writer Milan Kundera. He is 17 years old. “Rather than watching TV, I decided to open it,” says the latter, now 50 years old. I was taken, but then really taken. As well by the tone, the story, the rhythm as its three characters, caricatured and ambivalent. ”
The plot takes place during the Prague Spring, in 1968, and features three heroes, divided between lightness, passion, libertinism. “It was perfect for the teenager I was,” he says.
So perfect that he reads it all at once. Not once, but twice in the same night. “I must have started it around 8 pm. I finished the first reading around one in the morning and started over, Emery recalls. Since then, there has been no forced reading. The seesaw, it is there. ”
Love letter from 0 to 10, Susie Morgenstern
As a child, Judith was already “a big romantic”. The 34-year-old young woman she is now also remembers being “ultra sensitive” very early on. “The world seemed violent to me,” she says. In the canteen, when I was told to finish my plate because other children in the world had nothing to eat, I found it horrible. This injustice made me want to cry. ”
Consequence sine qua non, she feels out of step with the other kids. “I felt like I was the only one going through things so intensely,” she explains. Everything changed the day she discovered reading, and especially a book: Love letter from 0 to 10 de Susie Morgenstern.
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The leisure school
Addressed to children aged 7 to 8, it tells the story of a 10-year-old orphaned little boy, Ernest. A good student, handsome, but discreet, he is liked around him, especially by a young girl in his class.
In this novel, as in those of Marie-Aude Murail, Judith finds “like a kind of family”. “It was as if I discovered that other people lived the same emotions, specifies the young woman. I felt understood. ”
Claudine from Lyon, Marie-Christine Helgerson
Nonsense, it makes you think. Sami, who had just committed one that day, can attest to this. “My father got fed up, he punished me in my room. He then told me not to move from my bed, ”recalls the 28-year-old. He who loved to play video games is very annoyed. He looks at the dresser and pulls out a book at random.
He falls on Claudine from Lyon, a novel by Marie-Christine Helgerson about a little girl in poor health who works all day in her father’s loom and whose only dream is to go to school. “I stayed all day in bed reading it,” recalls Sami.
“I identified with her,” he says. She was living her childhood life. It didn’t always go well. ” From that moment, even 200-page books no longer discouraged him. “Everything seems possible to you once you have the click”, assures the engineer. The book has never left him: “This is the first one I put in my library once I had a home.”
Matilda, Roald Dahl
At school, Jean was ahead of his classmates. The teacher advises her mother to direct her to less illustrated books. “We’re going to type in your sister’s books,” she told him. On the menu, Roald Dahl and his famous novel Matilda.
He likes the story of this little girl with an oversized IQ. It continues with the author’s other children’s stories. “It’s always the business of kids who don’t have friends or who have some difficulty in one way or another,” reckons the 36-year-old cook. Matilda, she is misunderstood. Charlie, he’s poor. George Bouillon, he’s all alone. When you’re a kid who feels a little different, it speaks to you. ”
Jean, who is gay, knew early on that there was something different about him. “These readings allowed me to understand that it was possible to be different, that it was not serious. It could even be fun and allow, in the end, that the bad guys are punished, ”he says.
The little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
If there is a book that we do not pass by, that’s fine The little Prince. He upset Patrick. At the end of the reading, done in CE1 class under the aegis of the teacher (his mother), he burst into tears. While he had identified with the blond and puny boy, he understands that the hero is dying.
“I was inconsolable,” he recalls. I did not accept this, unlike the other indifferent students. I was the only one. Maybe I was more sensitive than the others. ”
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folio
Since then, the book, the first to have confronted him with death, has never left him. Patrick, now 50 years old, still has the copy of his 7 years old and the version told by Gérard Philippe. During the lockdown, the music journalist listened to what DJ Pedro Winter did with it. “It keeps following me,” he laughs.
Like some books by Marguerite Duras, The little Prince is one of his recurring readings. He rereads it once a year. “It’s like when you eat something that makes you feel good,” he breathes.
Little Nicolas’ Holidays, René Goscinny
Dan remembers spending his summer holidays in front of the TV, watching Disney Channel. For his parents, who worked in the restaurant business, there was no question of leaving Reunion Island, where he grew up, at this time of year.
Tired of seeing his 10-year-old brother hanging out in front of the screen all day, his sister, his oldest of seven, decides one day to confiscate the remote control. She forces him to read a book: Little Nicolas’ Holidays.
While he was not very receptive to reading, the collection of short stories written by René Goscinny is a “revelation” for Dan. “I was just talking about that. It fascinated me, he recalls. I, who was not going on vacation, found it great to discover that in metropolitan France, some kids spent them in colonies. ”
He reads it in one go, then goes on with the two other books his sister had at home. She buys more from him. As a teenager, he discovers unpublished stories of little Nicolas. His passion gives him a taste for reading. Better still, she makes him love the French, literature and foreign language courses.
He has since detached himself from it. “Little Nicolas’ Holidays don’t have any racialized characters, Dan points out. It’s as if [René Goscinny] had captured a whole category of the population. You realize that, even though it was great, it gets in your head when you’re a kid that people like you don’t exist. ”
Harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone, JK Rowling
For many children born in the 1990s, Harry Potter was the gateway to the wonderful world of reading. Alexandre, now 30 years old, is one of them. “I was on vacation with my grandmother in Gironde,” he recalls. I spent my days watching TV, it made her desperate. ”
Neither one nor two, she goes to the local bookstore and asks the saleswoman for something to interest a 9 year old kid. “We just received a book from England, it’s been a hit over there,” the latter replied. The first volume under her arm, she brings it home. “I saw the gift, I shot the face,” recalls Alexandre.
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Folio
His grandmother has an idea. If he reads the first three chapters, she offers him a packet of candy. “Since I like sweets, I tell myself that it’s worth it”, laughs the latter. But now, instead of stopping at the first three chapters, he devours the book in 24 hours.
Like many children, he sticks to the story, the humor, the characters. It’s simple and fun to read. “This is the first time that I have had this feeling while reading to want to immerse myself in the continuation at the end of a chapter. It made me aware of reading ”, concludes the history enthusiast.
The witch from the broom closet and other tales, Pierre Gripari
Clémence remembers having a taste for reading very early on. Tales from Broca Street by Pierre Gripari have a lot to do with it, especially that of The broom closet witch.
Unlike Cruella d’Enfer, this witch is not terrifying. She makes her laugh. The story of the latter, which as its name suggests lives in the broom closet of a haunted house, amazes him. She is sympathetic, grotesque. The author neutralizes her ability to be dark or scary, according to her.
“Is this a founding event? I don’t know, wonders the young woman. What is certain is that the book printed a cheerful report on the reading. Reading is not boring. It has always worked my imagination. ”
Today, she still loves witches, these free and independent women. But what she prefers are dystopian stories, “imaginary worlds close to ours where all our fears are projected”, pleads the fan of Ursula Le Guin. A bit like in the stories of Pierre Gripari, basically.
Sink or swim, Stephen King
All required reading was niet. Nothing helped, Sylvain didn’t like reading, it annoyed him. When, in the school playground, he sees his friends reading Stephen King, he thinks and goes to the bookstore in his parents’ village to get one: Sink or swim.
Cited as one of the best books for teenagers published between 1966 and 2000 by the American Library Association, it tells the disturbing story of a long march, in which one hundred young Americans perish one after another.
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I read
Alone in his room, Sylvain devours the book. The video game lover that he was at the time finds the same feelings of escape. “There was also a little forbidden side,” he says. I was not reading a novel by Victor Hugo. ”
From there, he delves into Stephen King’s bibliography. Misery, Simetierre, It, … Nothing escapes him. Not even today. Every summer since he was a child, he buys one, which he reads in the same place, in the garden of his grandparents’ house. “Without that, I don’t really feel on vacation,” he quipped. This is my Madeleine de Proust. ”
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