Jump a class. Back to school 2020: The little last (Black on white) was essential by entering the daily life of Fatima, a suburbs born in France in an Algerian family, practicing Muslim, lesbian, polyamatrous. A fragmented identity to which this first novel by Fatima Daas gave form, life, consistency, coherence. In his highly anticipated second novel, Play the game, The author camps a heroine also in search of her identity, that good academic results will offer her to reinvent. A second student in a priority education network, Kayden likes to write, as she indicates on the information sheet distributed at the start of the year. Soon, his literature teacher, Mme Fountain, the range in the first category of its very personal ranking making the sorting between “Brilliant students”, “Dormants” et “Damn shots that she will go out without getting tired”. She puts herself at the top of making him integrate Sciences Po. “Sciences hens, beware, you change!” “, Landed her friend Djenna. Kayden doubts, “She doesn’t want to disturb”. But if Garance Fontaine tells her that she believes in her, could she trust her?
Especially since the professor has a strange attraction over her. In his presence, Kayden has “Words full of throat” that she dares only get out of the SMS she sends her in secret. Not easy when you share your room with your older sister, when the mother unfolds a click-clack every night in the kitchen living room. “I dream that she has a room, my mother”writes Kayden. Will integrate a large school allow him to grant this wish?
Learning story – gender, sexuality, “What that means, Kiffer his life” -, Play the game revives the urgency of saying The little last. Each word acts as the potential detonator of a rocking in the existence of Kayden, at this age when all the doors seem open but without knowing which one to cross, ignoring who we are, what we want for ourselves, for our future. The urgency responds to the benevolence of a group of friends who learn to recognize embraced rhymes and then embrace the words of‘I Will Always Love You One evening of December 31. The benevolence is opposed to the rigidity of a system which is not ready to satisfy all the ambitions. This second novel is up to that of Fatima Daas: to tell what it implies that wanting to play the game without knowing the rules, without them being given to us.
Fatima
Play the game
Olivier editions
Draw: 15,000 ex.
Price: 20 €; 192 p.
ISBN: 9782823622546
