Femme Fatales of the world, unite! Read French author Jean-Patrick Manchette’s 90-page coolest of the cool noir novel ‘Fatale’ to have a sense of what it would really be like to take control of your life. The author gets right to the point, as in prose as sharp as a well-tempered stainless steel knife. And speaking of knives, here is the slim, athletic, fetching 30-year-old main character Aimée Joubert on the topic of killing, reflecting back on how she plunged a knife into the liver of her first victim -- her abusive husband, “It was a genuine revelation, you see,” said Aimée to the baron. “They can be killed. The real assholes can be killed. Anyway, I needed money but I didn’t want to work.” Aimée, you’re such a sweetie. I love you, babe.As we learn very quickly, the real assholes of the world are those mustachioed, potbellied, moneygrubbing capitalists forever reading their newspapers, sloshing down their beer and cheating everyone in sight. In this respect, nothing much has changed in nearly 100 years: refined aesthete Des Esseintes in Joris-Karl Huysmans’ 1884 novel ‘Against the Grain’ is similarly nauseated by all those mutton-chopped bourgeoisie. But Aimée's response to these odious bastions of mediocrity is entirely opposite to Des Esseintes – rather than retreating in isolation, she infiltrates their social circles; rather than becoming progressively weaker, she uses martial arts and exercise equipment to become progressively stronger; instead of reading Baudelaire’s poetry, she reads crime novels (I imagine her reading Jean-Patrick Manchette crime novels!); and, most dramatically, instead of wishing her enemies dead, she shoots them dead.This is noir crime fiction but none of that pandering to macho male readers, thank you. Any sensuality is not sexual or even in the presence of men. More to the point, Aimée is most sensual when she is by herself. For example, here’s our hero (or anti-hero) in her own compartment on a train, “She went on eating and drinking and progressively lost control of herself. She leaned over, still chewing, and opened the briefcase and pulled out fistfuls of banknotes and rubbed them against her sweat-streaked belly and against her breasts and her armpits and between her legs and behind her knees. Tears rolled down her cheeks even as she shook with silent laughter and kept masticating.”Make no mistake, action drives plot; there is very little delving below the surface, after all, who has time for in-depth self-examination when you are, like Aimée, forever recording the patterns and habits of your future victims and calculating your next move. In this respect, ‘Fatale’ is only one notch removed from cinema, cinema as in ‘Pulp Fiction’ or ‘Kill Bill’, that is. Even relaxing in her bathroom, Aimée primes herself for action: “Lying in her hot bath, she opened the crime novel she has bought. She read ten pages. It took her six or seven minutes. She put the book down, masturbated, washed, and got out of the water. For a moment, in the bathroom mirror, she looked at her slim, seductive body. She dressed carefully; she aimed to please.”Although ‘Fatale’ has the hard-boiled flavor of such American noir crime fiction as Hammitt’s ‘The Maltese Falcon’ and Cain’s ‘The Postman Always Rings Twice', there is also a decidedly political dimension. Recall how Jean-Patrick Manchette was an active Marxist in Paris but became frustrated when the revolution in the late 60s stalled out. One on level his novel is a cool, supercharged critique of corroded capitalism. With searing irony, the enamel plaque KEEP YOUR TOWN CLEAN! appears again and again in the story’s small French town.Since this is such a jazzy-cool novel, one last action from our sweet Aimée, this from the opening chapter, where she walks up to a fat pharmacist who is out hunting with his fat bourgeois buddies and has sauntered off by himself to take a rest under a tree. “He declared himself greatly astonished to see her here – first because she never went shooting and secondly because she had said her goodbyes to everyone the previous afternoon and taken a taxi to the station. “As surprises go, this beats all. And such a pleasant one too,” he exclaimed, and she unslung her 16-gauge shotgun, turned it on him, and before he had finished smiling emptied both barrels into his gut.”
Δεύτερο βιβλίο του Ζαν-Πατρίκ Μανσέτ που διαβάζω, μετά το "Η πρηνής θέση του σκοπευτή" που διάβασα, αν θυμάμαι καλά, τον Ιούνιο του 2010. Το "Μοιραία" μου φάνηκε ελάχιστα κατώτερο σε σχέση μ'εκείνο το βιβλίο, αλλά σε γενικές γραμμές πρόκειται για ένα πολύ καλό και, φυσικά, μαύρο αστυνομικό μυθιστόρημα, το οποίο είναι και αρκετά μικρό σε μέγεθος. Μπορεί να έχει λίγες σελίδες, αλλά η ιστορία είναι αρκούντως ικανοποιητική και χορταστική. Μοιραία, είναι η νεαρή Αϊμέ Ζουμπέρ, η οποία είναι μια, ας το πούμε, επαγγελματίας δολοφόνος. Μετακινείται από πόλη σε πόλη, αλλάζοντας όνομα και εξωτερικά χαρακτηριστικά, μαθαίνει τα πάντα για την άρχουσα κοινωνία της κάθε πόλης, τα μυστικά των πλουσίων και τις έχθρες που μπορεί να έχουν, και στο κατάλληλο σημείο χτυπά, κάνοντας φόνους επί χρήμασι. Εδώ έχουμε την Αϊμέ να ταξιδεύει στην μικρή πόλη Μπλεβίλ και να κάνει ό,τι έκανε στις προηγούμενες πόλεις. Μόνο που εδώ τα πράγματα δεν πάνε και τόσο καλά... Οι τελευταίες σελίδες του βιβλίου είναι απολαυστικές, με μπόλικη δράση και πολύ μακέλεμα. Μέχρι εκείνο το σημείο λίγες ήταν οι σκηνές δράσης και βίας. Η γραφή του Μανσέτ είναι εξαιρετική, με ωραίες περιγραφές και ρεαλιστικούς διαλόγους. Το βιβλίο διαβάζεται φυσικά πολύ γρήγορα και εύκολα, λόγω μεγέθους και γραφής. Είναι, μάλλον, από τα πιο πολυδιαβασμένα βιβλία του, και όχι άδικα. Πολύ ωραίος συγγραφέας ο Μανσέτ.
Do You like book Fatale (2011)?
I'm surprised by some readers' comments that the characters in this 90-page thriller are "thin" or "poorly sketched." Do these same readers feel jilted, following an elevator ride, for not getting better acquainted with their fellow riders? This book is a quick elevator ride with, yes, flimsy characters, but the delight comes from the glimpses you steal of other floors on the way to where you end up. On the ride we glance various things that expand the traditional structure of hard-boiled fiction. There is, for instance, the parallel between a killer who has made an ideological business of her sport ("The real assholes can be killed") and the smug capitalist good-ole-boys she targets. There is the toying with and ultimate avoidance of the expected manner in which Aimée is a "fatale," lethal but only vaguely sexual, solitary and self-sufficient on her bicycle. There are the sudden lurches from cold-blooded threat to whimpering, desperate inability, as when Aimée describes her job in one breath as "fun" and as something that has "all gone to hell."I agree that the quality of the writing is uneven; the dialogue in particular often struck my ear as not quite right. All the same, the cocktail of capitalist critique, gracefully described violence, ardent feminism, and roaming absurdity make for a sleek and fun 91 pages, even if it all goes to hell.
—Bryant
A tough little superb French noir novel that is sort of a revenge against the rich and mighty, but also a snapshot image of class difference and hatred due to that difference. The main character is sort of a professional serial killer, who is a shark looking for the rich to kill. And like all classic noir novels, there is not a wasted word in the book. Manchette for sure has that "it" quality down, and i pray that more of this late writer's work will come out. So far three novels and two graphic novels in English. More? More!
—Tosh
I picked this up at an NYRB (New York Review Books) sale at a local shop. They've got so many interesting-sounding "lost classics" in their list, I'll always check out the cover comments to see if they sound good. This small noir features a character who could be a template for Dragon Tattoo's Lisabeth Sander. The story is told in a terse, sometimes humorous matter-of-fact style. Occasionally I thought I noticed artifacts of awkward translation which contributed to my impression of the style, but the excellent Afterword by Jean Echenoz persuaded me otherwise. There is a strong political theme on redistribution of wealth that is now timely here, curious for a book written in 1977, albeit in France. Maybe they really are 25 years ahead of us. Very entertaining, especially for fans of noir.
—Jeff Friederichsen
