In Toulouse, a shock team for the Goncourt of high school students
Some of the writers in the running for the Goncourt high school students stopped in Toulouse yesterday to answer questions from those who will choose the 2022 winner. An exercise that the authors love, delighted with the outspokenness of their young readers.
Brigitte Giraud, Carole Fives and Makenzy Orcel were the first to throw themselves into the deep end of Goncourt high school students, yesterday morning, at the regional council, during the south-west stage of a tour of France which passes through seven cities . Already noticed by critics, from mid-August, then by readers interviewed in bookstores or fairs, this trio and six other writers were dealing with a completely different public, both less seasoned but more direct. “I love high school students, no doubt because I have the impression of having kept a rebellious spirit, a little adolescent, explains Carole Fives, who presented “Something to tell you”, her 7th book. Discuss with them is very stimulating. We discover over the course of their questions that they had a very fine reading of the texts. They are not superficial, they see to the heart.”
Competing with “Live fast”, Brigitte Giraud has been publishing for more than 20 years. She had already been selected for the Goncourt high school students in 2017 and has excellent memories of it. “That year, I was able to discover how such debates with young people are tests of truth. If they didn’t really like a book, they say so. It’s unusual in a world where everyone incenses everyone!”
Author of the imposing novel “A human sum” (more than 600 pages!), Makenzy Orcel experienced this when a student confessed: “I had trouble getting into your text”. At the same time, several high school students showed how much for them the style corresponded as much as the story told. “They are interested in the language, in the punctuation, in the form that we give to our story. Often, they agree to be surprised. And I understand that they allow it to be with my story which is a kind of infinite sentence.”
For all the writers selected, the Goncourt adventure for high school students is an exciting experience. “This prize is for the general public, people trust it; the jury is rarely wrong, notes Carole Fives. The day I learned that I was in the running, I was having dinner with friends with Brigitte Giraud. Imagine our joy at both !” Joy to be highlighted during a literary season which includes more than 500 novels. Joy also to achieve print runs of several hundred thousand copies, as for the Goncourt tout court. On point-blank request to our trio to cite some of the remarkable ones. No one scratches their head, no one dives into their mobile phone: the answers flow. “I was a bookseller when Jean Rouaud was rewarded for Les champs d’honneur (in 1990, Editor’s note), remembers Brigitte Giraud. I really liked this intimate and collective look at the First World War, this way of not being on the side of the trenches but of telling what the conflict generated in families, in regions. Plus, I was blown away by the writing.”
Carole Fives quotes “Sweet Song”, by Leila Slimani (2016): “It is rare for a woman to be rewarded by the Goncourt, so I was delighted. And then this description of family life and parenthood m seemed more authentic than the clichés often conveyed in this field.”
Makenzy Orcel prefers two titles, the latest Goncourt to date, signed Mohamed Mbougar Sarr and the 2010 vintage, by Michel Houellebecq. “The map and the territory impressed me in the sense that Houellebecq staged himself and elucidates his own death. The most secret memory of men is a labyrinthine investigation on the figure of a disappeared writer, on a ghost. I liked this reflection on literature, its place in our lives. And the fact that Mbougar Sarr dips it in Bolaño (Chilean writer who died in 2003, editor’s note). It’s a good cupcake dipped in hot chocolate!”