This is not a novel.
This is a novel yet.
Six childhood friends, Bernard, Louis, Neville, Susan, Jinny, Rhoda, all follow the same curriculum.
Thereafter, they find themselves at different times of their lives, in the same restaurant, where everyone takes stock of the past years.
Each reunion is a chapter of the book, introduced by a poetic description, the narrator, a moment of a single race day the sun. The first chapter is announced and by dawn, and the last of the twilight. One day six lives and flow in parallel.
Everyone speaks in turn.
Each is reported about directly, systematically introduced by the verb "say":
"We are here, 'said Jinny'"
"You have to store two, said Susan '"
And so on.
But the reader is soon aware that the speeches did not directly answer: he feels a strange shift, "co-dence" is not at the rendezvous.
And very naturally replaces the verb "said" by the verb "think".
For there lies the beauty and strength of the "novel" in an uninterrupted series of interior monologues.
No action: all that can "follow" the evolution of the characters and conduct of the life of each character is evoked in his own thoughts and those of the other five.
In truth, everyone is alone in his being, and during these regular meetings, nobody found one.
And then there is the seventh figure, Perceval, a companion who is never in the company, a childhood friend that everyone loves, admires, idealizes, the knight who went to India to help the poor and dies dune fall y horse.
This one does not "say" anything, it is "told" by others.
It haunts them.
Write a line more about this masterpiece (novel, poetry, theater all at once) would cause damage.
To read urgently.
Patryck Froissart St Paul, 7 December 2009