And Their Children After Them

Starred review from February 3, 2020
Mathieu’s stunning, bittersweet Prix Goncourt–winning English debut follows a teen boy through four summers in a dreary valley in eastern France. In 1992, 14-year-old Anthony schemes with his friends to ogle sunbathers at a “bare-ass” lakeside beach while echoing their parents’ racism in response to a neighboring boy’s recent drowning (“Everyone naturally figured the Arabs had done the deed, so people kind of hoped for a settling of scores”). Anthony’s solitary yearning emerges in staccato lines (“At night, wearing headphones, he sometimes wrote songs. His parents were jerks”), and his restlessness is reflected in Mathieu’s shaggy, aimless story. Anthony’s and his friends’ repeated adolescent male behavior—hanging out on the beach, drinking, trying to hook up with girls—is depicted in beautifully observed detail, while Mathieu’s unblinking descriptions of Anthony’s parents, Hélène and Patrick, a fading beauty and a hard-drinking racist beaten down by their dead-end blue-collar jobs, give the novel greater impact. Anthony’s provincial story is bookended by moments—the release of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and France’s World Cup victory—that stir him, but don’t change his life, and he has little to look forward to beyond the poverty and bleak outlook of his parents and friends as he enters adulthood. Mathieu’s subtle craft will enrapture readers and appeal to fans of Édouard Louis.

February 1, 2020
Winner of the Prix Goncourt in France, Mathieu's first novel to be translated into English follows three teenagers and their families through four summers in an economically depressed valley far removed from Paris. It's 1992, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is the song of the moment, and 14-year-old Anthony Casati is obsessed with the thought of topless girls. He and his cousin steal a canoe and paddle to the fabled nude beach across the local lake. His chance encounter there has far-reaching consequences for him, a wealthy girl named Stéphanie Chaussoy, and an immigrant boy named Hacine Bouali. Told in four sections, each unfolding over another summer, the novel details the torpor and hopelessness of a deindustrialized valley where children deal hashish and shoot their BB guns at the rusting carcasses of blast furnaces. Mathieu captures the vulnerability and awkwardness of adolescence with painful acuity as the teenagers struggle to find their ways in the world. But his interest extends further, to their families and the place itself; characters and setting are inextricable, as the book's best writing reveals. "In midafternoon, a diffuse numbness took hold of the projects....The towers themselves seemed ready to collapse, swaying in the waves of heat. Every so often, the howl of a tricked-out motorbike would slash through the silence....The boys felt sluggish and hateful." In the bar that Anthony's alcoholic father frequents: "People drank in silence until 5 o'clock, and more energetically afterward. Depending on their temperament, they then got sick, funny, or mean." The conflict between Anthony and Hacine has its roots in the valley's poverty and racism. In one of several vicious attacks, a punch "carried ancient pains and frustrations. It was a fist heavy with misery and missed chances, a ton of misspent living." Mathieu's sympathy for his characters is cleareyed and generous, and the final section--showing the entire valley caught up in World Cup soccer fever as the French team competes for a place in the finals--is surprisingly moving. A gritty, expansive coming-of-age novel filled with sex and violence that manages to be tender, even wryly hopeful.

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April 17, 2020

It is the 1990s in a small town where the warehouses and blast-furnace foundries have closed, leaving little economic security or opportunity for the future. Sounds like the Rust Belt of America, right? But in this case it is a parallel universe in the hills of eastern France. The town's burnt-out, disillusioned adults now hope for any work at all. If they can land two jobs, perhaps they will have enough money to get by, and movies and local bars are their primary means of escape. For their children after them, particularly the teenagers, life definitely seems bleak, with drugs and sex the preferred ways of dealing with the endless hours of a long, hot summer. Of course, they can also steal away to a local lake that attracts visitors in the summer. As Anthony and his cousin discover over the course of four summers, these vacationers bring with them a little money and a lot of teenage sexual experience to share. VERDICT Winner of France's Prix Goncourt, Mathieu's English debut focuses on coming-of-age angst while also speaking volumes for the disenfranchised, who rarely have a voice in their country's conversation.--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

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