Low Heights by French crime noir author Pascal Garnier features curmudgeonly Monsieur Édouard Lavenant, a wealthy businessman forced into retirement by a stroke at age seventy-five. Although Édouard has lost the use of his left arm and hand, in all other ways, both physically and mentally, the novel's cantankerous main character (and, no doubt about it, he's some character!) retains his full vitality.
Édouard's dear, beautiful wife Cécile died suddenly of cancer ten years prior. Thus, in his recent retirement, the old man chooses to move to a cottage on the edge of a village but is forced to hire live-in nurse/housekeeper Thérèse. The story's action and drama zoom forward each and every time a key individual in Édouard's past pops up, beginning with a polished gentleman claiming to be the old man's son.
I'll leave the unfolding saga to each reader and segue to a number of philosophical observations Pascal Garnier makes either directly as objective narrator or indirectly through Monsieur Lavenant.
Feeling Joy - "There was something indecent about feeling so good and everything in him rebelled at the idea of calling the waitress again. Yet he was dying to." Édouard's sense of identity is so completely entwined with his own grumpiness and dissatisfaction with himself and the world that he refuses, at least initially, to open himself to a general feeling of elation.
In his essay The Wisdom of Life, 19th century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer speaks at length about our internal attitude counting for so much - if we're of good cheer, we'll experience a greater amount of happiness then if we continually mope and complain. If feelings of joy come to us, so Schopenhauer continues, we should welcome such feelings with all our heart. Not to do so would be unwise and the height of folly.
Come on, Édouard, seize the day - be happy!
Prime Time Poison - "The view of the valley was magnificent but all they could think of was the Drummond family murders or something sinister and tragic." Out in nature, beholding a breathtaking vista, Édouard and Thérèse can only think of the brutality on last evening's news. Pascal Garnier's observation here: the media will bombard us with violent, grisly happenings to make sure we continue to fear of neighbor and keep us indoors glued to the boob tube.
Money, Money, Money - "They don’t give a stuff about the birdsongs or the sunsets. Nature, for them, is merely a source of income from which they scarcely profit." Édouard's harsh judgement of the surrounding country folk and farmers. And more generally of the entire capitalist system: viewing nature as but raw material to be sectioned off into property and ownership for the sole purpose of making money. Along with this, animals and plants are nothing more than objects to be dominated by humans.
Cycle of Life and Death - "With the ability to spot a carcass at more than three thousand meters, they would swoop down on it, and a quarter of an hour later there would be only a pile of bones." Édouard explains to a younger man the many benefits of vultures taking care of the dead – all very environmentally sound. Among the highlights of reading Lower Heights are the frequent musings on existential themes: the reality of death, the need to be attuned to the moment, alienation in the modern world.
Literature and the Arts - "He wanted none other than to be reborn, virgin, nothing behind him, nothing ahead, to learn everything afresh. He had noticed that if you typed the same word all over a whole page, the word ended up losing its meaning completely." Édouard begins to write a memoir for the first time in his life. He quickly comes to recognize the transformative power in the very act of writing. Later in the novel, Édouard has much the same experience when he takes up painting.
Ah, Family - "Besides, I’ve never been one for family. That gregarious need to be part of a whole has always been intolerable to me. We are born alone, we die alone and in between we act as if we’re not." Echoes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus.
Coke Refreshes - "It was like an atomic mushroom exploding in her head, an orgasm which sent her off into unimaginable spheres from which she descended gently, as if with the aid of a parachute, to land ecstatic, on this sofa as soft as a cushion filled with rose petals.” Hardworking Thérèse snorts cocaine for the first time in her life at age fifty-two. Thérèse tells Édouard, “No wonder young people take drugs.” Ha! Honey, you’ve got that right.
Low Heights is a searing psychological study, another Pascal Garnier minor classic.
Édouard is in for a colossal shock. "The girl must have been twenty-five or thirty years old, with clear skin and glossy hair, not unattractive, although her teeth seemed slightly too big for her mouth. Her features vaguely reminded Édouard of someone."
French novelist Pascal Garnier, 1949-2010
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