With “The absolute ear”, Agnès Desarthe narrates in a beautiful musical novel a thousand and a stories around a municipal harmony

In 2023. In addition, in Castle of RéniersAgnès Desarthe had looked at the question of time passing and aging by scrutinizing the memory of her family, struck by the deportation. Moreover, In The absolute earhis new novel which appeared on August 22 at Éditions de l’Olivier, “Nothing and no one dies”.

The novelist immerses us this time behind the scenes of a municipal harmony. Similarly, to better enter the intimacy of a handful of characters whose destinies will cross around music.

Matis, an infernal child, runs away from the daycare and saves Raoul (Tuba), a big unhappy man. Similarly, Madeline (Cor) has a son, Soren, in a coma. Therefore, She found Vincent (saxophone), her youthful lover. Furthermore, Jocelyne (organizer), the “the absolute ear”, agnès desarthe lady of the daycare, keeps a secret that the whole village seems to have forgotten. Meanwhile, She is “The replacement mother of all the children of the village school”. Jacques (the chief). relegated his infective father far, and ruminates the humiliation he made his friend when he was a teenager. Goneril. who suffers from uterus cancer, has a son, Hugo (trumpet), walled in his room since his high -speed motorcycle plunged his friend Soren into a coma.

Young or old, almost all the inhabitants of the village are part of the municipal harmony. A child. a “foreign”, landed in the village with her mother, observes them and notes everything in a notebook that she made herself. Sonya revels in the beauty of this set, and the music they play. She would like to be, but her mother is too poor to buy him an instrument. “It doesn’t matter, she thinksI “the absolute ear”, agnès desarthe will be chief. ” A few years later, when she realized her childhood dream, she returned to the village to attend the Christmas concert.

This choral novel. a true declaration of love to music, is an opportunity for Agnès Desarthe to enter the intimacy of a village and to narrate the fate of its inhabitants and the multiple stories that are woven in this microcosm where “Everyone knows each other”. A closed door where we fall asleep, where we quarrel, where we weave friendships who end up breaking, like love. Like the film A fanfarecinematographic success of 2024. Agnès Desarthe sings a hymn to this popular musical ensemble, source of consolation, shared joys, cement of a community, and yet often despised.

The writer is digging the themes dear to him, memory, childhood, family, loneliness, love of youth and difference. Each detail is finely recorded. from objects to characters, including situations, “the absolute ear”, agnès desarthe such as a carefully documented column, illustrated by sketches seized on the spot.

The writer also likes to describe with lyricism the nature, the seasons, the sky, the rivers … This natural decor in which the dramas of the inhabitants of this small countryside country are woven in silence. marking hearts and minds from generation to generation.

Agnès Desarthe writes words like others write music. As she had already done with The Lord Fiancé (2021). lA Romancière deploys her text as a score, with movements, curls, a rhythm, a terminology, which put all the narration at the service of music, at the heart of this very beautiful polyphonic and deeply human novel.

“The absolute ear”, , 144 pages, 19.50 euros.

“It was the music that decided. She had the power to enter the fingers, into the heads. She borrowed enigmatic voices, went up in each by ruse, also in the past. But above all she was born of a necessity. that of warding off the sadness of the days that decrease, from the cold that stiffens the shoulders, the weariness of the long deserted paths, the dread of old lovers, Prisoners of the same roof and hate, the bitterness of the meal taken at nineteen and a “the absolute ear”, agnès desarthe half hours, a single plate, a single glass, the pan at the table, the widower’s dinner, or the lonely child. ” (page 67).