Book of the Month - By Kathleen Thorne

The Girl from the Chartreuse
By Pierre Peju

Published by Vintage
Cost €11.80

The central character in The Girl from the Chartreuse is Etienne Vollard. He almost kills a small girl when she runs out in front of his van one evening after school. The late afternoon scene is busy. Mothers have gathered to collect their little ones. It is raining heavily.

"Anything can happen now, including the worst. The worst is merely one among a host of possibilities, a hyena lurking among ambient trivia."

The little girl is Eva. Her mother is late as usual. Instead of waiting at the school gate Eva runs off without any clear knowledge of where she is going. She doesn't know her way home. She runs right into the path of Etienne Vollard's van.

In many ways this novel is a study of eccentricity. Vollard is a bookseller and an inveterate reader. After the accident he drives aimlessly up into the hills above the town where the rain turns to snow. He parks his van at random and starts to walk. "He yearns to stride across the forest like an antediluvian beast, a powerhouse of strength, but he keeps running into the thick dead branches which break off against his forehead, and he can't tell if it is melted snow trickling down his cheeks or sweat, or blood."

In a way this is an image of Vollard's real life. The story of his youth is sad – even tragic. He is a tall youngster – way taller than average and bulky. He has red hair and chooses to be silent most of the time. In addition to his physical oddities, he reads constantly – whether in the classroom or in the playground. As a result he is singled out by his classmates for unmerciful bullying. The bullying continues until one day "he lunges at one of the pupils". He indulges in a violent act of revenge and is soon afterwards taken from the school.

His reading leads to his work as a bookseller. But even in this world, as in the Sorbonne during the student riots, "he inhabited a remote inner space while we (the students) on the outside were causing a ruckus". Despite his oddities, there is a caring side to Vollard's nature. This and his sense of guilt lead him to the hospital to check on Eva's recovery. In so doing, he meets Therese, Eva's mother.

Therese is another eccentric. She is unable to cope and delivers over to Vollard the responsibility of caring for Eva. Therese is adrift in the world. She has no interests and occupies her time driving aimlessly through the roads of the region.

Vollard is not sure what to do when he visits the little girl. He embarks on reciting to her great chunks of the books he has read and committed to his prodigious memory. Eva recovers in a manner of speaking, but remains mute. The climax of the story is sad but not unexpected.

This is a gem of a book. It is short and concise, with all manner of connections and interconnections. In it the world of sanity and normality becomes peripheral to the eccentricity of Vollard and Therese. Yet this complex and moving story doesn't encourage us to make glib judgments about either sanity or abnormality.

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