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In the troubled and captivating waters of “Blackwater”, the literary saga that will carry you away this summer

2022-06-30T13:50:53.268Z


For the first time published in France, this family and Gothic fresco, anchored in the dampness of the American South, is on the way to becoming the literary phenomenon of the summer.


The summer will be dark, humid and hot.

At least on paper, between the pages of

Blackwater

, a literary saga on the way to becoming a real phenomenon: six 260-page volumes where we follow the epic adventures of the Caskey family, owners of a sawmill in the small town of Perdido, Alabama.

A town where rich, poor, blacks and whites live around two rivers, the Blackwater and the Perdido, which meet in a vortex from which the bodies of those who drown never emerge.

It was after a terrible flood, covering half the city at the start of the 20th century, that Oscar Caskey, a young heir, and his servant Bray discovered, like an apparition, a young woman with hair the color of red clay, in the room of a flooded hotel.

She is beautiful, she is mysterious, her name is Elinor and she likes to take midnight baths in the Perdido.

His destiny will forever be linked to the Caskey family, whose tragedies and secrets, alliances and low blows, we follow over several generations, while the world is transformed, shaken by the Second World War and almighty oil. , the Great Depression and long-haired hippies.

With a touch of horror and fantasy, in scenes conducive to triggering real chills.

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Serial novel

Published in 1983 in the United States,

Blackwater

is the work of American Michael McDowell, an author and scholar with a passion for his country's relationship to death (his collection of artifacts, plaques from children's coffins or other post-mortem photographs, is now on display at a university in Ohio).

A prolific writer, friend of Stephen King, McDowell also wrote the screenplay for Tim Burton's

Beetlejuice

(1988), with whom he co-wrote the Nightmare

Before Christmas

(1993

)

.

If he spent most of his life in Massachusetts, until his death from AIDS in 1999, it was in his native Alabama, its murky alligator-infested waters, its pecan trees and its tenacious superstitions, that it locates the action of

Blackwater

.

With very precise instructions as to its publication: one volume per month, between January and June 1983. A process which echoes the soap operas of Balzac, Dumas or Eugène Sue, whose public eagerly awaited each episode and which inspired Michael McDowell, assumed author of a popular literature where pleasure must take precedence.

Full screen

Michael McDowell, author of

Blackwater

Laurence Senelik Collection

Nearly 40 years later, it is intact: if the publishing house Monsieur Toussaint Louverture, which publishes

Blackwater

for the first time in France, has chosen to publish each volume more closely, every 15 days in the format pocket, the feeling of lack is delectable and (almost) unbearable.

Published between April and June, the six volumes, which have already sold more than 120,000 copies, are now all available: it is therefore possible to "binge" them as one would episodes of a series that keeps you up all night (at condition of finding them: some bookstores are out of stock).

Among the fans, we lend themselves to the game of imaginary casting: who to embody Elinor, Oscar or Mary-Love, matriarch with a heart as hard as the diamonds she piles up in her coffers?

A veritable manna of romance,

Blackwater

has, curiously, never been adapted for the small or big screen.

On Monsieur Toussaint Louverture's website, we can read that "the rights are under discussion to be sold to a production company, but nothing has been done yet."

All the elements are there, however, to imagine a series or a “franchise” of films where one would get drunk on the heavy perfume of the marshes.

A modern and deep tale

But beyond the obvious gluttony with which we turn the pages of each volume,

Blackwater

resounds with a very contemporary echo.

In the Caskey family, if the men apparently have the attributes of power in their costumes and their offices of notables, it is the women who, from the rocking chairs of the porches of their houses, decide, decide, direct, also manipulate.

And know which threads (sometimes supernatural) to draw to influence a destiny, to make it bend under the blow of revenge or to shower it with blessings.

Homosexuality, tortuous motherhood, racism and social inequalities are also part of the plot, not to mention a complex reflection on money: written in the 80s,

Blackwater

could almost evoke a kind of

Dallas

of the bayou, where prosperity would corrupt the already dry souls but satisfy the softer ones.

Over the years, the dollars also trickle down on (almost) all the inhabitants of Perdido who forget, sometimes, that all it takes is for the rivers to rise again to sweep everything away and start from scratch.

Of all the riches, it is therefore nature and water, both tempestuous and nurturing, which remain mistress of the characters.

We let ourselves be carried away by its depth and the power of its waves.

Source: lefigaro

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