I had loved the first book of JM Guenassia (Club incorrigible optimists), and it is with curiosity that I started the second ... I just let go of this romance that I literally devoured ROMANESQUE in 2 days!
First, the reading pleasure is explained by the fact that JM Guenassia has a rare and undeniable talent as a storyteller. A limpid style, fluid, which takes us with him everywhere. He knows how to make living places, atmospheres, as well as accurately describing human characters.
Joseph Kaplan spans the years, he meets unknown environments (Algiers at the time of colonization, the inter-war Paris and balls along the Seine) as much as the great moments of history (landing saw Algeria the great eras of Czechoslovakia commmuniste) ... but all these context information fuck together without any trouble at multiple sandstone and always unpredictable twists that lie along the centenary existence of the hero, the latter being equally credible as each other.
Joseph Kaplan is not a political activist. He lives his life as a man at the mercy of events. It is rather close to him who undertakes that fight, resulting in the mad march century, through feminist struggles, socialists, communists .. all without dogma or theoretical flights of fancy, but through of concrete evocations, to describe the policy impact on the daily lives of men.
How about this story without falling into clichés, like "the great history and the small".? ... I would just say that the author commands respect by showing that it is still possible to make us relive the events described a thousand times, without that we have once printing repetition or déjà seen.
I add that even the Kaplan family life is fascinating. Filial relationships, romantic, friendly characters are sketched with such force that enters the intimacy of each, through the joys, sorrows, frustrations, abandonment, betrayals, reunions, which make the canvas of all existence, but are sometimes exacerbated here by radical choices imposed by the historical and social context (the Wall, War ...)
How to convince you you rush on this novel, and thus enter the not heroic life, but still extraordinary Joseph Kaplan, who, from the first to the last page, you will take your breath?
Last thing: even the end is very very successful, which is rare enough to be underlined and appreciated!
