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Downtime Books-National News Slanderous tongue not in cheek
| Slanderous tongue not in cheek |
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| Friday, 16 May 2008 | |
 There seem to be two ways of writing a book about French life: the Peter Mayle cuddly reportage based on village life and local wines, or the Joanne Harris slightly less cuddly fiction based on village life and local cuisine. Whichever way you prefer to go, it’s nice to know that your villagers never stop being somewhat cuddly and never stop eating and drinking. Now along comes Jill Culiner. No cuddles, very little food and what wines are consumed seem to curdle in the mouth. Her village is peopled by a hairdrier murderer, a group of ratty old gossipmongers, a slattern trapped in her own spiderweb of ineffectual daydreams and transparent lies, a chic couple of chicken torturers, a profitloving, concrete-mixing mayor whose construction company giveth while it taketh away, a victim who might have screwed one partner of whichever sex too many, a dog named Werewolf and a narrator who writes out of the side of her mouth. In fact, so Mickey Spillane is Culiner’s prose that you can see the cigarette bobbing in her mouth as she talks you through her village of Epineux-le-Rainsouin (from various passing mutters, we place the village just north of Nantes). But don’t expect Spillanesque fisticuffs and gunshots in the night. Although the prose is North American – Culiner is a Canadian writer and photographer (the haunting jacket photo is hers) who divides her time between there and here – the mood is très Gallic, very Georges Simenon, the watcher in the shadows cupping the cigarette in the hand to stop the glow from being reflected in the rainwater puddles…And like Simenon – or Ruth Rendell – the dénouement is suppressed almost to vanishing point: no midnight car chase, no wailing sirens, no final clink of cuffs on villainous wrists. Be warned, though : if reading this book has one effect on you, it will probably be an insistance that any chicken you eat henceforth shall be free-range. If you love France enough to recognise that it has a seamy side, an underbelly – you’ll face this book with a jaunty anticipation. Unfortunately, you’ll have to search it out as best you can, because the imprint, Sumach Press, is Canadian. Slanderous Tongue by Jill Culiner Sumach Press 2007: 248 pp., softcover. $16.95 US and Canadian www.sumachpress.com This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it |
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