Présentation de l'éditeur
Twice shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Julian Barnes continues to reinvigorate the novel with his pyrotechnic verbal skill and playful manipulation of plot and character. In
Love, etc. he uses all the surprising, sophisticated ingredients of a delightful farce to create a tragicomedy of human frailties and needs.
After spending a decade in America as a successful businessman, Stuart returns to London and decides to look up his ex-wife Gillian. Their relationship had ended years before when Stuart’s witty, feckless, former best friend Oliver stole her away. But now Stuart finds that the intervening years have left Oliver’s artistic ambitions in ruins and his relationship with Gillian on less than solid footing. When Stuart begins to suspect that he may be able to undo the results of their betrayal, he resolves to act. Written as an intimate series of crosscutting monologues that allow each character to whisper their secrets and interpretations directly to the reader,
Love, etc. is an unsettling examination of confessional culture and a profound refection on the power of perspective.
Extrait
i remember you
Stuart Hello!
We’ve met before. Stuart. Stuart Hughes.
Yes, I am sure. Positive. About ten years ago.
It’s all right—it happens. You don’t have to pretend. But the point is, I remember you. I remember you. I’d hardly forget, would I? A bit over ten years, now I come to think of it.
Well, I’ve changed. Sure. This is all grey for a start. Can’t even call it pepper-and-salt any more, can I?
Oh, and by the way, you’ve changed too. You probably think you’re pretty much the same as you were back then. Believe me, you aren’t.
Oliver What’s that companionable warble from the neighbouring wankpit, that snuffle and stamp from the padded loose-box? Could it be my dear, my old—old as in the sense of former—friend Stuart?
‘I remember you.’ How very Stuart. He is so old-, so former-fashioned that he likes naff songs which actually predate him. I mean, it’s one thing to be hung up on cheap music synchronous with the primal engorgement of your own libidinous organs, be it Randy Newman or Luigi Nono. But to be hung up on the sun-lounger singalongeries of a previous generation—that’s so very, so touchingly Stuart, don’t you find?
Lose that puzzled expression. Frank Ifield. ‘I Remember You.’ Or rather, I remember yoo-oo, / You’re the one that made my dreams come troo-oo. Yes? 1962. The Australian yodeller in the sheepskin car-coat? Indeed. Indeedy-doo-oo. And what a sociological paradox he must have represented. No disrespect to our bronzed and Bondi’d cousins, of course. In the
world’s fawning obeisance before every cultural sub-grouping, let it not be said that I have anything against an Australian yodeller per se. You might be one yourself. If I prod you, do ye not yodel? In which case, I would give you honest eye-contact and an undiscriminatory handshake. I would welcome you into the brotherhood of man. Along with the Swiss
cricketer.
And if—by some happy whim—you actually are a Swiss cricketer, an off-spinner from the Bernese Oberland, then let me just say, simply: 1962 was the very year of the Beatles’ first revolution at forty-five turns per minute, and Stuart sings Frank Ifield. I rest my case.
I’m Oliver, by the way. Yes, I know you know. I could tell you remembered me.
Gillian Gillian. You may or may not remember me. Is there some problem?
What you have to understand is that Stuart wants you to like him, needs you to like him, whereas Oliver has a certain difficulty imagining that you won’t. That’s a sceptical look you’re giving me. But the truth is, over the years I’ve watched people take against Oliver and fall under his spell almost at the same time. Of course, there’ve been exceptions. Still, be warned.
And me? Well, I’d prefer you to like me rather than the reverse, but that’s normal, isn’t it? Depending on who you are, of course.
Stuart I wasn’t actually referring to the song a
