«Their Children After Them»: a social Goncourt award

An overview of some of the major literary prizes - episode #1

Le Regard Libre N° 47 - Loris S. Musumeci

«Now everyone had become, to one degree or another, a lackey. Silicosis and firedamp explosions were no longer part of the job’s risks. Now people were dying a slow death—from humiliation, from petty servitude, from being meanly monitored at every stage of their day; and from asbestos, too. Ever since the factories had shut down, the workers were nothing more than confetti. So much for the masses and collectives. The time had now come for the individual, the temp worker, the isolated soul. And all these crumbs of jobs drifted endlessly through the vast void of work, where a multitude of divided, plastic, and transparent spaces multiplied: bubbles, cubicles, partitions, and window decals.»

This is Nicolas Mathieu’s second novel, and he has already received the highest honor from the Goncourt Prize. After venturing into the crime fiction genre with his first novel War on the Animals, published in 2014, the young, forty-year-old writer turned his attention to what is known as the social novel. Their children after them tells the story, in four parts, of four summers in the 1990s in the suburban, post-industrial town of Heillange. 

Anthony, who was fourteen in 1992, is the main character, but the novel is about an entire community—the residents of Heillange. Through his parents, cousin, friends, enemies, the bar owner, and many young people, the book simply recounts life in this town—its factory, its walks, its architecture, its pastimes, its joys, its hardships, and the deep aspirations of its residents. 

If Their children after them is considered a Goncourt-worthy novel—a view on which more or less everyone agrees—because while it is indeed a social novel, it is not limited to that. Nicolas Mathieu knows how to touch readers in their most mundane daily lives as well as in their most intimate feelings, because what he tells resonates deeply with the story of this group to which I belong—namely, the middle class. This leads him to evoke a poignant nostalgia for those whose youth unfolded in the nineties, but also for all those—myself included—for whom the musical and social references still resonate. After all, while technology has rendered every object from those years obsolete, the lifestyle, the boredom, and the desires have remained virtually unchanged. 

«It was his pleasure to drive drunk through the night in Heillange, to feel tears welling up as he listened to RFM. He drove at a leisurely pace, following the long quays of the Henne, endlessly retracing the all-too-familiar streets of his hometown. The light from the streetlamps punctuated this smooth journey. Little by little, he felt the deep emotions that sad songs bring welling up inside him. He let himself be swept away. Johnny was his favorite. He sang of dashed hopes, stories that fall apart, the city, and loneliness. The passing of time. One hand on the steering wheel, the other on his beer, Anthony retraced the landscape. The colossal factory, bathed in the glow of the spotlights. The Airbus planes where he’d spent half his childhood listening to the school buses. […] The betting shops, the McDonald’s, and then the emptiness of the tennis courts, the darkened pool, the slow drift toward the suburban neighborhoods, the countryside, the nothingness. The lyrics to »J’oublierai ton nom.” Before long, he found himself right near Steph’s place without even really meaning to. […] He lit a cigarette and smoked, letting his thoughts wander. And then he went home like an idiot.”

Here are the wanderings of a young man who doesn’t really know where to go, so he just goes around in circles. A young man who cries, not quite sure why; a young man who enjoys smoking weed and drinking, still not sure why. In this passage, as throughout the entire book, the author’s language is not only clear and lucid; it is also pleasant and elegant. And every word is chosen with flair, not without a touch of nostalgia. But youth also means a search for love, a search for sex, and those first stirrings of emotion. A heady, wild attraction to these girls on the part of Anthony—and all the boys his age—who regard them as the most precious prize there is.

«From then on, the young man’s evening consisted mainly of looking for Steph among the guests under the pretext of picking up empty glasses. Every so often, he’d catch a glimpse of her ponytail, make out a shoulder, catch her eyes or her face, or find her where she wasn’t. He’d piece her together from scratch, starting from nothing, completely making her up, then run into her by chance amid the chaos of the party. Steph, who was quickly getting tipsy, didn’t take long to play along. Anthony’s stomach was filled with sparks. She returned his glances. A smile. The cleavage between her breasts shone like the sun.»

Ultimately, this is a great novel because, as its title suggests, it deals not only with youth but also with generations. «Their children after them» is taken from the book of the Bible, the Sirach, to show that if there is a son, there were a father and a mother before him, and that they, too, were once young and full of dreams, and that they grew into adults, and that their fate as residents of Heillange was fulfilled in the tragedy of families falling apart, in the tragedy of alcoholism and that of unemployment. In turn, their child Anthony—will he meet the same fate? after them?

«At the table, at the bar, in bed—with their gloomy faces, their big hands, their broken hearts—these men had been a pain in the neck to everyone for years. They’d been inconsolable ever since their famous factories had closed and the blast furnaces had fallen silent. Even the nice ones, the caring fathers, the good guys, the quiet ones, the submissive ones. All these guys—or almost all of them—had gone off the rails. The sons, too, as a rule, had gone off the rails, getting into all sorts of trouble and causing plenty of worry, before finding a reason to settle down—often a girl. All that time, the women had held on, enduring and mistreated. And things, finally, had returned to an acceptable course after the low point of the crisis. Although the crisis was no longer just a moment. It was a state of affairs. A destiny. Theirs.»

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

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