The Salon du roman historique will be held in Levallois on July 3 and 4, in the heart of Parc de la Planchette. It will be two days instead of one as in previous editions. To push innovation further, the organization did not want to stop at fiction alone; this year, biographers, essayists, comics and youth authors will also be invited. It is Carole Martinez who will take over the presidency of the 2021 edition. We know to what extent the novelist, from her first novel and first success, Le Cœur cousu, knew how to play with the codes of tale and historical narrative, at point of winning the Goncourt for high school students in 2011 with
Du domaine des murmures
whose action took place in 1187. Among the guests, Muriel Barbery, Emmanuel de Waresquiel, Camille Pascal, Adrien Goetz, Hédi Kaddour, Régis Jauffret, Michelle Perrot, Nathalie Saint-Cricq, Daniel Picouly, Maël Renouard.
Interview with a president happy to highlight the historical novel and all the literature.
LE FIGARO.- Presiding over the Salon du roman historique de Levallois has a special flavor for you, can you tell us why?
Carole MARTINEZ.-
I lived in a shared flat in Levallois-Perret centuries ago and, in 2011, I was invited by the salon which awarded the historical novel prize to
Du domaine des Murmures
, my second book.
It is very pleasant to come back to this city as godmother or president of the show, and especially since I have been given the opportunity to invite authors and historians that I love.
The festival had to be canceled in January like so many others, but the organizers managed to postpone it, and I thank them for that.
Le Cœur cousu, Du Domaine des murmures
(Goncourt des lycéens) borrow from the historical tale, is it a register that is natural to you?
Where does it come from?
I really like that term you use “historical tale”, it's strange, but it suits me. The tale is outside of History, it crosses time, the historical novel is deeply rooted in an era. There is a tension between these two terms and I would like my novels to illustrate it. I need the marvelous of the tale, of these modest, fascinating and cruel tales, stemming for the most part from the oral tradition, of these stories which haunt us and answer to archaic obsessions, and I have always dreamed of traveling in the time, I like this change of scenery that I experience when I immerse myself in the writing of a "historical" novel. I seek in the tale, the popular tradition; and in History, this scholarly exploration, to understand what I am, what we are, why we have come to this.
I was particularly interested in going through the ages around a theme, the body (Thanks to Georges Vigarello), and at one time the Middle Ages (Thanks to Georges Duby and Michel Pastoureau).
But I am not a historian, just a novelist, I do not retain anything, I immerse myself in a bath of documentation and reverie, I live a story like a journey and I forget everything I have learned.
Les Roses fauves
, your latest novel, is a little more unique because it takes place in our time, but that doesn't prevent you from going back and forth with the past, why?
Yes, I can not help myself, I always escape in the folds of time.
It's stronger than me!
In
The Wild Roses
, I went to Spain during the Civil War and to the trenches of the First World War.
Ghosts invade a Breton village: the family ghosts of Lola Cam, the young postwoman of Spanish origin, and the ghosts that haunt the small town.
By discovering the stories of those who came before them, Lola and the people of the village free themselves from pains that do not belong to them, but which they have inherited.
The ghosts of the individual and those of the community intersect in the novel.
I like ghosts ...
The show is not only devoted to historical novels, it opens up to biography, essay, comics, children's books, what do you think?
Still happy! Reading is such freedom and everything is answered. We must decompartmentalize all this!