Published earlier this year by Editions Anne Carrière, Les Echappés is Renaud Rodier's first novel. Literary cartography in three words.
1. Kaleidoscope
Lauren, Aaron, Emilie, Nathaniel and Aashakira; from Kansas to Mumbai, all the way to New York, five of them make their voices heard in this choral novel, where each chapter is written in the first person and places the reader in the confessional. Five destinies, or rather five escapes, intertwine to mark out a world in disarray.
2. Tangent
The protagonists may be complete opposites, but they share the same aspiration: to extricate themselves from their past at all costs, to deny their lineage. They each make their own way along the margins, trying to make it their own, to forget their origins.
3. Frenzy
Although the narrative is tortuous, Renaud Rodier's writing is extremely masterful and lively, calmly counterbalancing the frenzy that drives these tortured beings.
The story revolves around four protagonists, anti-heroes shattered by their childhood, and their quest for a soul mate, that fantasized «other self» capable of pulling them out of their spleen. A sort of Baudelairean quest, where the Ideal and the Beautiful are embodied by a distant, fleeting figure who manifests the growing gulf between what they were and what they would have been capable of being, the curse of hope.
Renaud Rodier
Les Echappés
Editions Anne Carrière
400 pages
January 2024
Write to the author: quentin.perissinotto@leregardlibre.com
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