This April 1, Antoinette Paillard found on the threshold of her house a package of carefully wrapped books. " Come on! she said to herself, how long is this going to last? Ten days already since the Swiss “semi-confinement” prevented this octogenarian dynamic from going to the bookstore of Perroy, a wine-growing town leaning against the shores of Lake Geneva. Then a neighbor lends her books to her, but for fear of catching the virus, puts them in front of her house, and disappears immediately. " And she especially doesn't want me to give them back to her!" "Laughs Antoinette. " Really, you think the germs stay on the pages, do you?" "
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In France as in Switzerland, the bookshops lowered the curtain on the arrival of the Covid-19, no offense to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, who considered a time to keep them open. Snobbery was superfluous, judged opinion, than to consider book stores as essential businesses. For literature buffs, there is only one rule now: you have to live on stocks. Or as we say in the middle, on his "PAL".
The PAL, or Pile à Lire, is this more or less high heap of unread books that collect dust in private libraries. And observers say these batteries are shrinking like never before since the start of containment. " Our data allow us to see what our users read, and at what pace, " says Khalil Mouna, director general of the social reading network Gleeph, who experienced a peak in registrations in March. “ Usually the PALs fill up, but for the past few weeks they have been deflating at an exceptional rate. This is obvious for the novels: the reading rate has increased by 100%! "
Stephen King and safe values
With one in three private sector employees partially unemployed, and many students confined to their homes, the time spent on reading explodes in French homes. To fill the idleness, many revise their routines, which to furnish their quasi-holidays with studious programs. In Paris, Charles, a 45-year-old cameraman who has been inactive since the cancellation of all of his filming, prided himself on rereading the Art History of Ernst Gombrich - the Bible of the genre. Withdrawn from his parents in the Alpes-Maritimes, Hugh, 28, an official at the Ministry of Justice, " varies the pleasures " between learning Persian and reading the Aeneid in Latin.
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Others, however, must continue to work. In Morsbronn-les-Bains (Bas-Rhin), Eva Molina " is not one of the people who have time ". This 38-year-old French teacher must continue to provide distance education, while overseeing the education of her two children, 5 and 9 years old. She is still more than ever attached to her evening reading time " to escape from this gloomy daily life ": Haruki Murakami, Tatiana de Rosnay, and some positive novels loaned to her neighbors " to cheer them up ".
In this burdensome atmosphere where fear of contamination and the constraints of confined life mingle, everyone has their choice readings to ward off anxiety. On the reading group that she administers on Facebook (“Le club des mordus de lecture”, 40,000 members) Lorraine Letournel Laloue, childminder and author, 35, notes that many people reread books they liked by the past: “ They are going to remake a Stephen King, or go towards sure values, things that reassure them. "
Member of the group and author, Virginie Sarah Lou (her pen name) admits to chaining the “ feel-good ” books so as not to “ run the length of your neck ”. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Virginie Zicot, 36, suddenly fell in love with dystopias, or intentionally negative utopias. " I had read Margaret Atwood's 'The Scarlet Maid', and having her restricted freedoms overnight made me want to explore this universe, " explains this adult trainer, who has been doing books by Aldous Huxley and Ray Bradbury. " I like to contemplate the idea that our freedoms are not acquired ."
The other Camus
Surely we must see a sign of the times when the reading of dystopian works sheds light on reality, and vice versa. Undisputed champion of this category, La Peste d'Albert Camus has established itself as the French-speaking literary phenomenon of the epidemic: between February and March, the number of Google searches on this classic was multiplied by twenty. Currently, he is in third place in the ranking of sales of French novels in E-book on Amazon. On Twitter, the mentions of the work explode.
But - magic of chance or sociology of social networks? - the only Camus that we meet on the Facebook group “ Bitten by thrillers ” is not called Albert, but Frédéric. Cultural journalist at La Voix du Nord , he braids laurels to the author of thrillers Franck Thilliez, who captures all the light on this group of 30,000 members. Object of success: his book Pandemia , published in 2015, which tells of an epidemic of lightning flu which is rapidly paralyzing France. " Everyone is rereading it these days ," explains Cécile Quidé, 33-year-old housewife and group administrator. “ With this book, people are trying to understand why and how such a disaster could have happened. I imagine that these catastrophic scenarios help them to tame this frightening reality, to become familiar with this pandemic. "
Many nevertheless testify to a new evil, the difficulty of concentrating on the pages for more than a few minutes. The mind too caught up in the news, the concern too present. “ It's paradoxical, ” notes Cécile Quidé, “ people have never had so much time to read, but they find it hard to delve into a story. Our Facebook group is organizing a literary award, but the jury members tell me on Messenger that they cannot concentrate on the works in competition. They are all very concerned about what is going on. Some have sick people in their families. "
Aware of this anguish, the administrator created a discussion space dedicated to the coronavirus on the group of “Mordus of thrillers”, a way for everyone to find some comfort. Others make a radically opposite choice. " I no longer accept messages talking about the Covid-19 on our group, " said Lorraine Letournel Laloue, of the "Club for reading buffs". An initiative which displeased some, but which satisfied " 90% of the members " according to the administrator, who wants her group to remain " a little bubble of oxygen to forget for a few moments the confinement ".