Literature: Laurent Mauvignier, an empty house full of ghosts

It's a magnificent family saga (750 pages, no less!) in which the writer imagines the lives of his paternal ancestors across three generations. The quest begins with a few clues he has before him: some letters, old photographs where his grandmother Ernestine's face has been carefully cut out, a medal, traces of blood that persist on the parquet floor after decades, and above all, an empty, dusty house in the heart of the French provinces.

Through a kind of literary miracle, he manages to give them a voice, a presence, a destiny disrupted by the two world wars of the last century. The great-grandmother forced into marriage, whose life is as moving as Emma Bovary's… Her daughter, who tries to emancipate herself through illicit, homosexual affairs, but also with a German officer, which will earn her the right to have her head shaved at the Liberation… Their legal husbands, unsure of how to react.

Beyond these unforgettable characters, Mauvignier makes the whole history of France and the psychology of bygone eras palpable.

With language whose breadth and beauty are matched only by its precision and accuracy. A novel that continues to haunt us long after we've closed it.

The Empty House – Laurent Mauvignier, Éditions de Minuit, 750 p., €25.