Back-to-School: 5 First-Time Novelists to Discover

Nancy is the city of first-time novelists par excellence: the Stanislas Prize is awarded there every year – at the Book Fair on the Square from September 12 to 14 – to recognize a first literary work. This year it goes to Agnès Gruda with her beautiful book with the lovely title Ça finit quand, toujours? (Equateurs). She could have been included in the selection of La Croix opposite. But it was necessary to choose from the 73 first novels announced for this fall's release, which includes a total of 484 books. In this tide, first-time novelists benefit from a triple effect: the general frenzy of the new school year, which rushes readers to book fairs and bookstores; curiosity for the unknown and the allure of discovery; and the clemency of the media and the public towards new writers.

Delighted to hold his work in his hands, the first-time novelist enjoys real sympathy: he is guided, pampered, and advised by his publishing house. But if he has found a publisher, everything remains to be done: he must go out and meet readers! Baptism of fire at the Nancy book fair, Le livre sur la place, of which La Croix is ​​a partner: he signs his first dedications, debates, talks about what he has written… And dreams of recognition, with a red banner across the cover. Because the first-time novelist, like any self-respecting author, also has his eye on the prizes… Not the prestigious autumn awards that the old hands vying for. Although… Why not? Two first-time novelists are on the first list for the Goncourt Prize, David Deneufgermain with L'Adieu au visage (Marchialy), and Paul Gasnier with La Collision (Gallimard).

The advantage of the first-time novelist is that he can do almost anything. Generally too young to indulge in autofiction (although), he is in tune with society, uninhibited... The form can be as elaborate or skillfully deconstructed, handling both pop-style banter and elegant language. There is more audacity and therefore more risk, but otherwise, how can you stand out? And gain enough momentum for the next step, the hardest, it seems? Writing the second one.

Married with three children, Marguerite is the angel of the home. In these post-war years, she experiences "the terrible feeling of satisfaction of the good little housewife who contemplates her clean and organized home, the pot steaming on the gas." Family life flourishes in the small country house. Then it will be the industrious city. But something happens that disrupts the ordinary and monotonous life. Her daughter remembers it. She has not forgotten that one day, her mother was no longer there.

The narrator calls her ghost mother to witness, questions her, reconstructs the missing part: "Is it ordinary life that you can no longer bear or the absence of choice?" She left with "the Other," this man, a long-distance sailor, whom she joins in Barcelona, ​​or perhaps in Brest, who knows? "If nothing is tangible in this story, I might as well trust chance, intuition."

The investigation is stalling. Being a housewife in the 1950s fuels frustration and rage: "To you too, everything must seem more desirable than the fragmented hours confined indoors, always busy, never spectacular." But what has become of Marguerite? Her daughter is plotting a thousand paths. What was the absent woman looking for? "It's so difficult for me to express in words what I imagine," the author admits.

Reine Bellivier delivers a sensitive portrait of this Virginia Woolf from Deux-Sèvres, a kind of woman who can only free herself by running away. A fragile first novel, like a piece of broken earthenware stuck back together in small pieces. These shattered pieces of an ordinary yet so singular life.

It could be the banal story of two teenage girls, lifelong friends, who end up going their separate ways and losing touch. Too kind to make a fortune, Jess stayed behind, drove the school bus, and consoled everyone. Constance escaped to Paris: she became a TV presenter, hid her roots, and did everything to appear. The death of her grandmother brought her back to the Alpine valley, and the gap hit her: was she really from this country? "She stood there for a moment, alone in the noise of others and the percolator, hunched over, stirring her coffee and her tangled emotions." Because everyone in the village was involved, from the bar-tabac owners to the organic farmer.

Confronted with "real life", the audiovisual star discovers "France at two speeds", also remembers life before: "It is not enough to desert places for places to desert you." The intimate part, the adolescent memories, the resentments and the loves are inscribed in the folds of the mountain, but not only.

Journalist Camille Bordenet takes the opportunity to showcase in her novel the challenges of rural life, the tensions with tourists seeking authenticity, the impression of administrative abandonment, but also the energy of the people, the village solidarity. So many challenges of the countryside embodied by Jess and Constance, who will have to find each other again, reduce the distance, perhaps admit a shared destiny.

Some violence is passed down through the generations, says Mathilda Di Matteo's novel , La Bonne Mère . Véronique is what popular culture calls a "cagole." A woman from the South (here, from Marseille) who dresses scantily, speaks loudly, and wears too much makeup. "Some say she's vulgar, but I'd say she's sunny. A heatwave sun, the incendiary kind," says Clara, her daughter. The story begins with the air of a comedy. A working-class family: father a taxi driver, mother a secretary. A brilliant child, who studies at Sciences Po and has found a very chic, very good-natured boyfriend there.

When she introduces him to her parents, it's a culture shock. Because he's tall, Véronique nicknames him "the giraffe." Because they're simple, Clara is a bit ashamed of her parents: "She uses words bigger than her to make us feel small," her mother remarks. From this classic discrepancy emerge some delightful passages on class struggle.

But little by little, the novel transforms. Through little sentences ( "I often tell myself that one day, there will be a tragedy. I'm going to hit you or I'm going to kill you," the giraffe tells him one evening), the question of violence against women suddenly bursts forth from the cheerful atmosphere. How they remain silent, how they are passed on from one generation to another. All this is told without being demonstrative, with energy, a raw style and a reminder of the strength of maternal love. This Good Mother is a good novel.

Once upon a time there was Hector and Luz. Young. In love. But not a couple like any other. Because both have "a little something extra" : this handicap, mental or physical, which makes them "only children, blessed or cursed, it doesn't matter, but born under rather special circumstances." In the eyes of society, their relationship seems invalid. Are the disabled condemned to romantic solitude? This is the story that Gabrielle de Tournemire tells in this delicate and luminous first novel.

The 27-year-old graduate of the École Normale Supérieure spent a year of community service in a residential home for adults with disabilities in 2021. The experience nourishes the delicacy and tact of her perspective and makes her writing screamingly truthful. With finesse, Des enfants uniques describes the shock and ambivalence experienced by parents when doctors announce the disability; the fears felt when it comes to thinking about the future; the pitfalls, the daily dilemmas. Does overprotecting prevent us from growing up?

Gabrielle de Tournemire builds a gallery of beautiful characters around her heroes, like Carlo, the educator. He initially embodies those who doubt ("But why the hell was it so difficult for him to take this love seriously?") before helping the couple to strengthen. Like him, the reader is captivated, touched by Hector and Luz, Luz and Hector, unusual children with ordinary dreams: "Patiently, they would advance towards something that resembled happiness."

A village. Two young neighbors. Paths that separate in adulthood. "I think you're the first silent person I've ever met." This is what the narrator remembers when he thinks back and addresses his deceased friend. It had been years since the two men had seen each other, each having taken a different path. One had left the Lorraine village of their childhood to study and make a life elsewhere. The other had stayed, and had, as it were, faded away, withdrawn from all social life, vanishing into the world even before, years later, truly dying.

The Country You Walked on is a letter to a lost friend. Daniel Bourrion tries, with small impressionistic touches, to give a face, a journey to this friend with a "holey past." A school memory here, a memory of a village festival there, a complicated family destiny. But it's difficult to retrace the steps of someone who never tried to leave any. "All this absence (...) . This halo of mystery is you, a quasi-ghost, already," writes Daniel Bourrion.

The language of the first-time novelist, curator of libraries in the city, unfolds, organic and inventive, to recount minor but essential existences, lives on the margins, the solitude of the countryside. He strives to give words back to someone who didn't use them much. "It's a form of homage, a story of not abandoning you." And a striking exercise in friendship.