Régis Jauffret is a contemporary French author with over 20 works to his name. Lacrimosa is the first to be translated into English, and the first offering by Salammbo Press, a new publisher dedicated to introducing contemporary fiction from “foreign” novelists to English-speaking readers. His previous novels include Sévère, a fictionalized account of the sex scandal associated with the financier Edouard Stern, soon to be made into a film.

The book is written as a series of letters between an older man and a younger woman who were lovers, of sorts, before her death. He reflects on the events leading up to her suicide; she writes back from a dismal afterlife; a nothingness, as she expresses it.

Lacrimosa received good critical reviews when originally published in France; the general public has been less impressed, some describing it as tedious and confusing. “Afterlife” novels such as The Lovely Bones have become popular in recent years, and this one introduces a new angle. The idea is interesting, but the implementation doesn’t do justice to the theme.

As with any work based in another culture and written in another language, translation is an important part of the whole. The overly descriptive style used here is not best suited for rendering into another language – phrases that resonate in the French cultural milieu may not have the same sound to English ears. For example: “Suicide gushed through your brain like an oil spill” is an uncomfortable translation. The original “marée noire” (black tide) is often used in French to describe an oil spill, but it should be left to the reader to make that association. “The black tide of suicide swept through your mind” might be more meaningful in English. You imagine the narrator to be an enthusiastic, knowledgeable, but non-native English speaker. And, in a nuance completely lost on English readers, he addresses her in the formal “vous” while she uses the familiar “tu”.

Translation aside, the underlying work has its own problems. Rather than express his thoughts and feelings,  the man recounts what happened during the past few months. Constant repetition (“You did this… you did that… you’d done this”) becomes irritating. More irritating is the author’s habit of building up long sentences with numbers of unrelated ideas – in contrast to the shorter and clearer sentences in Sévère. The French original is equally verbose and has been described as an educational exercise aimed at using all the synonyms imaginable.

A couple of examples from the text show how these long sentences lose coherence and cohesiveness. Although shorter than many of Proust’s page-spanning sentences, these, and many others like them, are difficult to follow:

He was finally located between two spy satellites that had confused his trimaran with a UFO. A small group of astronauts, livid at being disturbed while cleaning their space station (which had turned into a real pigsty due to leaving drinks for an intern), parachuted him onto the police station car park around midday.

A fifty-something father with a tanned complexion who refused to dye his hair, but was devastated at no longer sparking the slightest flicker of interest in girls’ eyes as they walked icily by, blocking out males whose grey hair resembled an old-fashioned flannel beret and dismissing them as dirty old men.

Although we have such a diverse English-language literary environment, translated works from non-English writers should be appreciated for the different cultures they reflect. Contemporary French fiction is in good health, but few English readers could name any of its key writers who come not just from metropolitan France but from Canada, North Africa and Indochina. If French literature is to become globally relevant once again, it needs to be transmitted across cultures; selection and translation of texts is key to this transmission. Lacrimosa will probably not appeal widely to an English-speaking readership; its “shock and awe” approach is enough to deter many. One can hope for better things from Sévère, planned for release here later in 2012.

Bookmark to