Ah, Rene Fallet ... The sympathetic writer here ... "Suburban East", "Pigalle", "The old timers", "An idiot in Paris," "The poacher of God", "The Beaujolais Nouveau has arrived "," Cabbage soup "and so on! Reel off the titles of his most famous novels is enough to put me in joy as each one awakens in me wonderful memories ... read Fallet, it is the marriage of poetry and earthiness, tenderness and anarchy, beaujolpif and cycling ... Need I remind you here that this dear Rene also created a cycle race, the loops of the Besbre only race in the world whose winner is known in advance, prohibiting escape and bistro where breaks are required? In this respect, this book published in 1951 is one of the most highly falletiens Rene Fallet precisely because we tale a vélocipédique odyssey on the roads of France ... Ah, what a picturesque hero Antoine Peyralout that some lunar pedaling on his scooter with a Viaticum for every bag of beans, three cans of sardines and a bottle picrate! And what a scooter as his, which is hanging by painting or so! There are the "road movie" in there, but what dominates is the lightness, freshness, carefree, poetry and especially a crazy feeling of total freedom ...
All the same, you might say, this is a good argument for a novel thin over 300 pages! A rebellious teenager who goes to attend a football match by bike? Well, yes, the argument is thin ... but precisely the talent of Rene Fallet is all the greater since it manages to excite us with this micro-plot. In what way? First, by dotting the path of Antoine thousand and one adventures and misadventures that make this "Scooter" a picaresque novel madly ... Then because the style of Fallet willingly dresses tiny adventures of this trip of a color ironic epic ... In fact, dare we say, this book is full of set pieces, such as the tasty chapter where Antoine is asked to convey a coffin on his machine, the deceased had demanded that all his burial was placed under the sign of velocipede! It was often said that he was the de Fallet Brassens Letters ... I must say that the unbreakable friendship that the two men devoted themselves invites comparison ... Still, it seems fair enough ... This novel has the charm of a Brassens song ... There is the same praise of friendship, healthy and simple joys, the same wisecracking humor, the same love of life, liberty, the same hatred the petty bourgeois pettiness ... This book, we spruced spring, pumped, at peace with the world ... It makes you want to ride a bicycle and go on an adventure on the roads, a daisy lips ... It's not a story, it is a philosophy of life ... a manual of happiness ... a cheerful lesson ... In this day and age, what better reading ?
