Rastignac in cowboy country

Tuesday's books - Ivan Garcia

A young financial wolf sets out to acquire a derelict steelworks site for an Arab prince. But in the American heartland, foreigners are scary. As a result, the businessman finds himself at odds with the local cowboys. A modern western coupled with a detective story that draws readers into the heart of this Rust Belt [rust belt] that's made such a splash through Donald Trump.  

Beast of the East is the first novel by Jean-Noël Odier, an author with an atypical profile. A French-Swiss entrepreneur living in Dubai, he trained at Stanford University and later became an investor. His ties to the world of finance and commerce are evident throughout the book, lending it a certain realism. This is reminiscent of authors such as Balzac in their method of writing, alternating between description and dialogue in a bourgeois-mundane milieu.  

A narrative in reverse

«I, Antonin Rasmussen, Scandinavian, Protestant for eleven generations, utopian and speculative financier, misguided explorer of a decaying industrial revolution, died far from home, and I don't even know why.»

When the novel opens, the reader is confronted with a narrative device resembling a kind of diary. Beginning on July 4, 2013, it introduces the protagonist, Antonin Rasmussen, and tells the reader that he is dead. From this declaration - rather implausible for a narrator - the work becomes a succession of analepses narrating Antonin's adventures within the Midwest American. The protagonist, a businessman in the service of Emir Hamda bin Arfa, wishes to acquire «The Beast of the East», Weirton's steelworks in West Virginia.

Antonin Rasmussen is a golden boy who has flair, as the other characters often point out. However, as he attempts to make the deal a reality, old Midwestern demons will oppose his plans; sometimes peacefully, often with violence. In this tumultuous story, the author deploys a fresco of colorful characters, all quite eccentric, who turn out to be slightly caricatured, but very enjoyable when discovering the novel.

Readers will cross paths with Lord William Cazalet, Antonin's great adviser, an English gentleman whose favorite pastime is studying the American Civil War; Ambarish Agarwal, a sustainable development magnate; and local Weirton personalities such as Senator Turbid, gun-shop owner Marshall Conway, father-son duo Charles Conoy, and many more.

An ode to steel giants«

Indeed, the story is fragmented into three distinct narratives, as if to underline the ghosts that haunt this «Beast of the East». The first is, of course, Antonin's story, from his interest in the factory to his death. But this is interspersed with an investigation by Lucie Conway, the daughter of Weirton's gunsmith who fell in love with our young Rastignac after saving his life, and who embarks on an investigation into the trafficking of painkillers.

The third story - fictionalized but based on archival documents studied by the author - is a fictionalized biography of Ernest Weir, one of America's steel pioneers and founder of Weirton Steel in Weirton, whose life is revealed to us and parallels that of Antonin. Who wishes to be like him in many ways. Without a doubt, Jean-Noël Odier offers a poignant ode to the «steel giants» who have marked the history of the American Midwest and helped forge strong identities and mythologies.

Reading Beast of the East, the reader sets off to conquer the West with a host of figures that remind him or her a little of The human comedy of dear Balzac. This rich and interesting first novel, in the vein of a Western, augurs a fine literary follow-up for Jean-Noël Odier, the kind of entrepreneur who, to write a novel, has to get his hands dirty... with steel. 

«The Beast from the East was a roaring, greedy, insatiable creature of steel. For almost a century, it gobbled up millions of tons of coal and iron ore with the frenzy of a ferocious animal. The Weirton industrial complex was the scene of an orgy of fire, cold, vital breath, telluric forces and creative power. Iron and steel is war, peace, religion, vertebrae and the blood of nations.»

Write to the author: ivan.garcia@leregardlibre.com

Photo credits: © Ivan Garcia