Paint or die. Magistral.

This is almost by chance that the author will discover the artist, there 8 years, the dune exposure favor. And here, this is an artistic shock. A meeting. The meeting. "The immediate connivance with someone. The strange sensation BE already come to a place. Javais all with Charlotte of the oeuvre. I knew what I was discovering. "(P.70) and to feel called by the paintings and by that painted them. And dinvestiguer. And to visit its places of life dinterroger witnesses.

What he discovers this woman too little known talent of upsetting the ends. For Charlotte Salomon is not only an artist dexception, but a woman dexception. A strong fragility inhabited by his art. Charlotte grew up in Berlin in a family hit by a succession of dramas. His aunt, his mother, his grandmother have all ended their day. To believe quune curse strikes. Will it be the next on the list? That would be to underestimate the life force that lanime. Despite the extreme emotional loneliness is his, despite the vacuum left by absent, despite the rise of Nazism which lexclut all spheres of society, Charlotte stands. Because she found her hope of salvation as it found its way: painting. There is survival. Here is his reason for living. Exiled in the south of France from 1940 to 1942, after leaving his father, his stepmother, his great love, his friends, his loved places, it will give body and soul to his art and painting over 1,300 gouaches as so many testimonies of what it has lived through, overcome. The singing and so often borrowed from his singing its scriptural inspiration, will bring forth the dark light of its history of creation.

A masterly example of resilience.

What works confided in a suitcase to her doctor before being deported and died in a concentration camp in 1943 to just 26 years. And to clarify this man handing her luggage said: "This is my life. "

A whole life in this suitcase, casket of his talent, witnessed his courage and his extraordinary ability to sublimate his life and transcend her suffering through art.

Therefore, it is understandable how difficult it was for David Foenkinos to pay tribute to this remarkable woman at any point without fear BE below emotion and fascination which exerts on him. For years, he will bring this novel in gestation, Completion date where he will find the same custom words to coat the body of his emotions.

And the result is just dazzling.

The style, with short sentences, crossing the line after each item bears the emotions conveyed by the text with phenomenal power. The reader is catapulted to the heart of the life of Charlotte Salomon, his works, willing at the image of David Foenkinos few years earlier, to discover more before the person whose life was an example of transcendence.

A shot of the heart of this literary season!

Karine Fléjo for the blog Chronicles Koryfée