“The blue bicycle”, the adventure of our fifteen years

Undoubtedly hacked by chance at the Library of Postal Officials in Rennes, the large format book published by Fayard, dressed in a first of which was not so beautiful, had nevertheless, once open, been closed to his final point. However, We had, as we say, swallowed the pavement.

Despite the approximate drawing of the cover on which a red -haired girl gave a pedal stroke. Nevertheless, we started to turn “the blue bicycle”, adventure our the pages, and this, just after having repositioned the cushion on our back so that the headboard in pine of the Landes does not shear our shoulder blades: the novel new in our hands had 392 pages. Therefore, And beware of the assertive parent who would pass the head through the door of the room to make a proposal that would be deemed aberrant: “The weather is nice. However, you wouldn’t go bike rather“. Consequently, We said no, it was a book with a bicycle, moreover. Furthermore, And in the torpor created by the half closed lighters. In addition, we were starting a reading that was going to continue several summers.

Feminist without realizing it – "the blue bicycle", adventure our

We knew nothing yet-and for good reason Wikipedia did not exist. and the author was too sulphurous to be in the Larousse-by Régine Deforges (1935-2014) yet a writer for a certain time, “the blue bicycle”, adventure our founder, even, of a publishing house, the gold of time, broadcasting erotic novels but not that, feminists too. Her heroine was a woman. Léa – the first name of her own daughter -, and this Lea wore the novel with liveliness and carefree. Uncquering. at least at the start, who did not prevent Léa from influencing history with a great H, because our favorite heroine was going to meet the great protagonists of her time, from Charles de Gaulle in the middle of the Second World War to Che Guevara, liberating of Cuba, excuse a little.

In the summer of 1997, however, the destiny of the character of Léa Delmas was unknown to us. We did not know that Régine Deforges had already written a sequel to The blue bicycle. 101 Henri Martin (1987) and the Devil still laughs (1988) and the dark Black tango (1993). That his saga had a phenomenal success – more than 10 million copies sold and a translation into around twenty languages. Fortunately for us. Claudie, the librarian, learned in the purchase of essentials, was going to deny us: we would therefore read, each time on the loan list, the epics of Léa, of Indochina (Silk Streetin 1996, The last hillin 1999) to Cuba (Free Cuba!in 2001).

Our Lea. over time, seemed rather to pay the side of independence struggles even if she was always very busy orchestrating her world. What consisted of: to frighten “the blue bicycle”, adventure our his family. to shake up his lovers, to rebun the weak women, to give orders like a small general, but hair. Why did we tolerate this selfish anger anger? He was conceded courage, which came back to forgive him for everything, turning the pages.

But now at the turn of the second millennium. despite its attractive political positions and its craze for the causes of liberation, we no longer get the same wood. And. while we had read, and obviously reread, his provocative projections with delight, that we had envied her absolute approach to life, we no longer wanted to be like her. It was to forget about the teenagers that Régine Deforges had paid to our young girl imaginations – because The blue bicycle It was. since the origins, a reading shared with a friend of heart.

Especially since we had surely dreamed, like Léa, “the blue bicycle”, adventure our of commanding her world. We had also fantasized. too, to meet our adventurer – necessarily more frail than the fictitious Tavernier François, and in that undepressable, of the novel. We even got angry at the television adaptation undertaken by France 2. However. Laetitia Casta, in Léa, had done the job; Beautiful capricious wearing her Venetian blonde Félin as described in the book – it said complexes on her mop, on this subject.

Review the entire mini-series “La Bicyclette Bleue” in 2000, on France 2.

But the lea of our imagination could not be embodied in any possible actress. remained for us halfway between the image of the cover, and the idea that we had made up of a young woman who takes her life in hand. And even if Régine Deforges had described her a lot – her eyes. her cheeks, her breasts, her crises – she kept an “the blue bicycle”, adventure our uncertain face. Like the person we want to become when you read. in the summer of his 15th birthday, in his bed, while waiting to put on his sandals and leave.

Summer series: guilty pleasures. Everyone has a song, a book, a film, a program … of which he is a little embarrassed to admit his tenderness. The free culture journalists confess.