Review by James Holden of "Les couleurs primaires" by Mélissa Verreault

Camille lives a colourful life. She works for a paint manufacturer, where it’s her job to invent names for the 2,000 unique shades they produce each year. And yet, for all this colour, Camille’s life is colourless. She says her brain is blank and her hours at work empty. It is to fill this emptiness that she sets out on a quest to discover whether or not someone has ever loved her but not had the courage to tell her. It’s a quest that takes her to old friends and haunts, and ultimately to a decision about her life.

This is the outline of Mélissa Verreault’s charming short novel Les couleurs primaires. It is published by Les Éditions Didier as part of their range aimed at French language learners, ‘Mondes en VF.’ The texts in this range are all pitched at a certain language level as defined by the CEFR. Verreault’s novel is defined as being A2 level, which means that it’s intended for learners at an ‘Elementary’ standard. I should say here, though, that this does not make the text suitable for beginners.

Language acquisition is a slow process. Professor Stephen Krashan’s has outlined in his theories just how important reading is to that process, and has emphasised the fundamental need for what he calls ‘compelling comprehensible input.’ The texts in the Mondes en VF range all work towards that aim – they are designed ‘pour le plaisir de lire en français.’ Verreault’s novel certainly provides compelling content for language learners. The inclusion of definitions in the footnotes make it an even more useful tool in the learning process (the definitions are themselves given in French). Additionally, and like all the texts in the range, Les couleurs primaires comes with a range of free supporting materials, including vocab sheets and exercises. Better still, it comes with a free audio version which can be downloaded from the publisher’s website.

As a language learning tool, this novel is great. The story drives the reader onwards. I was concerned enough with Camille’s quest not to feel put off by the extra effort of reading in my target language. Whilst the text is pitched at A2 standard there are definitely some trickier passages and structures. The reader will encounter the passé composé, the imparfait, the futur proche, the future simple and the conditionnel and will need to be able to differentiate between them. There are also a number of idioms. Verreault herself is from Quebec, so the reader should be aware that some of these idioms might not be heard in Paris – however, this is explained in the footnotes.

The text’s short length and its necessarily uncomplicated French means that its plot also lacks complication at times. The story is charming, and the reader feels for Camille during her quest. However, there were moments when I wanted to know more. For instance, the revelation that Camille’s school friend Karine had loved her when they were younger was passed over in a rather cursory fashion. So, too, was the revelation and then refutation of Camille’s unwitting role in a suicide.

Nevertheless, I was thoroughly charmed by this short novel, and was happy enough after finishing it to read it again immediately, this time with the audio book playing. I felt a great sense of motivation from having finished this text in my target language. I also felt motivated by Camille’s commitment at the end of her adventure to live colourfully. As she says: ‘J’ai envie de vivre en couleurs.’

About the reviewer

James Holden is an independent academic and writer. He is a Lisztian, a Proustian, and a proud nerd. The author of In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained, his recent research has focused on the piano playing and aesthetics of the Romantics. He is currently working on improving his French. His website is here.

Review by James Holden of "Paris Bride" by John Schad

A woman, a bride even, or at least a ‘supposed bride,’ walks through the bustling streets of London on her way to see a doctor. Then, another day, this same woman walks into a bustling court room and, a short while later, walks out a bride no longer, neither supposed nor legally. The woman who walked in as Marie Schad walks out as Marie Wheeler, born again as the person she had once been.

At the same time, this Marie walks out of history. In Paris Bride, our author, John Schad, walks behind her, following her or finding her as she progresses through literary history – in the pages of works by Woolf, Kafka, Mallarmé and more. He finds her back in Paris, only a Paris that has become a ‘manuscript of a city,’ a modernist space in which identities are rewritten, so that our Marie becomes, amongst others, Marie, the wife of Ferdinand de Saussure, one of Mallarme’s four Maries, and a thinker of the words of Dr Marie Stopes. She is spotted by surrealists and wanders by Walter Benjamin. Here, for John Schad, to quote one of his major intellectual preoccupations, the philosopher Jacques Derrida, ‘there is nothing outside of the text.’ Or, rather, Schad works under the same assumption as that most Parisian of modernists, albeit one not mentioned in Paris Bride, Marcel Proust, which is to say he seems to believe that ‘real life, life finally uncovered … is literature.’ The real life of Marie Schad, née Wheeler, was, for John Schad, lived in literature, and can be uncovered, and perhaps even finally regained, amongst its pages.

Paris Bride asks throughout the question of legitimacy: the legitimacy of Johannes and Marie Schad’s marriage; the legitimacy of Johannes's ‘second’ marriage to the other Marie, and, by extension, the children that issued from it; and, more broadly, the legitimacy of literary criticism. Here, via Kafka, the university is shown to be a court. But more, Paris Bride puts university scholars in court, and watches as they prosecute themselves. John Schad says of himself that he is a ‘bad’ scholar. Not for him what Benjamin calls the ‘conventional scholarly attitude.’ Instead, Schad is, he declares, in possession of ‘useless papers … found somewhere toward the broken back of a broken drawer’ and is ‘guilty of misreading.’

And yet, to read Paris Bride and its author in this way is to misread them. This book asks not for ‘an impromptu or hasty reading’ but for something altogether more ‘exquisite.’ For what ‘Scholar Schad’ offers here, with consummate skill, is a legitimate and sophisticated marriage of scholarship and storytelling.

About the reviewer

James Holden is an independent academic and writer. He is a Lisztian, a Proustian, and a proud nerd. The author of In Search of Vinteuil: Music, Literature and a Self Regained, his recent work has focused on the piano playing and aesthetics of the Romantics. His website is: https://www.culturalwriter.co.uk/