Violence, bloody violence.
Too Close to the Edge - A Pascal Garnier crime bloodbath, the most extreme, most action-packed of the French author's twelve short novels translated into English.
Over the past two months I've read and posted reviews on eleven Pascal Garnier novels published by Gallic. I saved Too Close to the Edge for last. It's almost as if the author wanted to send me off with an unforgettable kicker, a tale embodying the spirit of wrenching, blood soaked Euripidean Greek tragedy, say Medea or The Bacchae.
Too Close to the Edge shatters the author's usual pattern of building up to the crime noir parts by exploring the psychological, existential tensions of his characters in the first two-thirds of the book. Not here. In Too Close we're given the first bits of crime and death in the opening pages. And the story builds and builds from there.
One abiding theme in the author's novels: violence and chaos beneath the surface of seemingly normal, everyday men and women. in The Front-Seat Passenger, a wan, passive young lady from Paris turns psychopathic killer, in Moon in a Dead Eye, a retired milquetoast bookkeeper picks up a gun for the first time in his life and shoots an innocent man in the face before smothering his wife with a pillow. The list goes on.
This violence and chaos beneath the surface theme is exacerbated by old age - an individual maintains society's expectations of being a good, upstanding, moral citizen throughout an entire lifetime until one becomes old. Then it happens: intoxicated, savage Dionysus bubbles up to take revenge - all of a sudden, sweet, goody-goody grandma or grandpa becomes an instrument of Dionysian fury.
Which leads us to the main character in Too Close: Éliette Vélard, age sixty-four, lost husband Charles two years prior. Upon retirement, the couple planned to move from their Paris suburban apartment to an isolated vacation house they've been fixing up for years, a house out in farm country at the foot of the Alps . But then the unexpected: Charles died of cancer months before his retirement.
Daughter Sylvie and son Marc implore Éliette not to take up full-time residence out in the boonies with the yokels - too remote, too dangerous. But mom has had it with moping around her suffocating apartment, watching TV and waiting for the occasional visit from kids and grandkids. Fooey!
Trim, lively, still attractive Éliette not only moves but gets a drivers' license for the first time in her life and purchases a top-of-the-line Aixam, a spiffy little microcar to zoom around the rural roads and into town to do her shopping.
"It took a little while to get used to driving it up the dirt track that lead to her house, but after a few days she was able to go backwards and forwards, left and right without too much damage to the bumpers. Her first solo expedition ( a round trip of about twenty kilometres) gave her as much of a thrill as if she had piloted a plane. Window down, hair blowing in the wind, she sang at the top of her lungs: 'Je na'ail besoin de personne en Harley Davidson . . ' The vehicle had changed her life."
One day, out in her Aixam, Éliette has a flat tire and just so happens a gentleman in a suit walking along the road offers help. Éliette not only accepts his gesture of kindness but, tire changed, drives the gent back to her home for tea. Then tragedy hits: Éliette receives a telephone call from her neighbor: their beloved son is dead, an automobile accident. Shortly thereafter, all hell breaks loose.
Extreme French crime fiction noir. With Too Close, Pascal Garnier slams a reader with the fire at life's center - love and death, Eros and Thanatos.
Grab a copy and buckle up. You're in for a sizzling, full throttle joyride.
French novelist Pascal Garnier, 1949-2010
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