1976 Olympic Games A small Romanian gymnast has just completed a delivery to the beam. The public is amazed. How, she's only fourteen? Alas, the note appears: "zero point zero. She returns of possible misconduct in his head, the arrival of the back flip possibly not stable enough, what she could do to deserve this? "The public roars, the coach gets angry and console the child, judges are agitated. The Swede rises, "he opens his hands () Then the little stretches his hands towards him, she asks for confirmation, it is a ten ...? () Yes, it is a zero point zero a ten. " Lola Lafon opens his account of that unforgettable victory in Montreal. It explains the terrible course Nadia to reach this perfection, the ambiguous role of his coach that demolishes unscrupulously these body tweens, always receding limits its requirements, mania carrot and stick. It makes us live inland drives, live the suffering and doubts champions in general, Nadia in particular. How do even better when, at the outset, it has reached perfection? The chapters are very short. They are cut by exchanges between the writer and Nadia, by email or telephone. They have such an accent of sincerity that if a note at the beginning of the book not warned us that they are fictitious and straight out of the imagination of the author, one would swear authentic. The novel is not centered only on the performance of the young prodigy athlete. It also shows us the terrible dictatorial reign of the couple Ceausescu. The incessant supervision to which people are subjected, the secret police, the threat everywhere latent, agonizing. And even a "police menstruation", since the tyrant decided that women should have as many children as possible. Lola Lafon explains the painstaking research to which it is delivered, people met, interviewed, the masses of peeled documents. She also studies the psychological consequences of this "training" on Nadia. The ravages of this hype. There she is in the light, everywhere, all the time. It pulls this little miracle, this little fairy, this little mischievous elf. And then, overnight, nothing. It is no longer her. It entices more. His body has changed. It becomes adult. I can not say I liked this novel that I found very hard, very shocking. Some passages are ambiguous, full of innuendo I'm not sure I always correctly decoded. But I found it very interesting and very successful, especially since we remember the grace of this exquisite miniature athlete, without realizing the horror lurking behind. It therefore deserves to be discovered.
