When reading With the Animals, one can imagine what it must have been like for sensitive Noëlle Revaz to grow up in Switzerland's rustic hinterland. How much contact with farms and farmers did she have? How much coarseness, brutality, hardship and violence did she witness?
In the process of claiming her own voice as a Swiss novelist, Noëlle Revaz recounts how she created a unique slant on the French language when writing With the Animals, her first novel, language that can not be identified or pinned down to any particular regional dialect, language where "she allowed herself to be guided by the music of words and the rhythms of sentences at the expense of grammatical rules" (from Translator's Note). And respecting the translation, W. Donald Wilson deserves much praise for rendering the author's idiosyncratic French into lively, colorful English.
With the Animals is a minor classic, a mesmerizing novel told in first-person where the narrator is Paul, a man who owns his own farm. And mesmerizing is not overstatement - the book's language casts a spell on a reader as if by magic, so much so the more you read, the more you will become enthralled - precisely the fate of a young lady by the name of Anis in Laurence Cossé's A Novel Bookstore.
From a certain perspective, hypnotic language is exactly what is needed for a reader to keep turning the pages since the world according to Paul the farmer can be rough going, correction, make that extremely rough going: Paul has emotionally abused and beaten his wife into silence; he is the father of eight children but, by his judgement, they count for far less than his animals; he's a drinker and possesses the constricted heart of a man both power-hungry and selfish in the extreme. However, it must be conceded, Paul's viciousness does not extend to his animals: "What you've got to keep in mind is never to be mean to one that could never understand such a level of meanness: for example with the animals it's no use yelling, being as they never understand a word you say." One of Noëlle Revaz's frequent strokes of black humor.
But Paul is in for a shake up - enter Jorge, called Georges by Paul, his new farmhand from Portugal. For starters, Georges is gentle and sweet and has a special connection with all of life, including the animals: "Georges, he gets on famous with the cows, he has a trick: he talks a bit and they come rubbing themselves against him all friendly and licking in his palm, even when there's no salt. It galls you the way he can win them. They just need a whistle from him to come looking near happy you'd say, though when I call they never even lift an ear. But me, I couldn't give a rat's fart. There's not a speak of jealousy in me." Ha! Not a wee bit of jealousy, Paul? Again, the author's cup of black humor runneth over.
Georges' compassion finds particular expression in his relationship with Paul's wife, Vulva. As an aside, it is worth noting Noëlle Revaz confessed a sense of shame she was obliged to overcome in using this name but such a name was befitting Paul's character, reducing people to the level of his animals: "Why is Vulva called Vulva? . . . It's like when they're born, the way the first time you see their mug the names come into your head and you just say "Blossom" or "Louise" straight off, though you've never thought of it before, for it's the name suits them, and there's no call to think women come by theirs any other way."
Of course, Paul feels threatened by his farmhand's compassionate nature and reduces Georges' grace and humanity to his own suffocating ways: "if Georges is that interested it wouldn't surprise me if he's not so much thinking of me but of getting her into his own bed, and that's why he's always wanting to help Vulva and protect her from the clouts, even if she goes looking for them herself."
Every scene in the tale offers further insight into protagonist Paul. And Georges is the perfect counterpoint, a large, muscular, romantic man from the city with an education in Latin and the arts. One particular episode is most revealing - it's when Georges insists Paul send a letter to his wife who is in the hospital recovering from surgery - the removal of a huge lump that formed in her abdomen. ""Think a little of your lady, he says, Georges, making free to put himself inside my head. "Just think a bit how she's lovely and the tender feelings that come when you think about her hair and her looks and the rest." . . . Me, I don't claim to know much about pens, and I haven't enough bumptious pride to say to myself inward: "This here Portuguese is getting on my nerves with his wordings. He always fancies he's better than everyone else, the god damn darkie.""
I've included a good number of direct quotes to underscore With the Animals is a novel where the language counts every bit as much as the succession of events. And Paul's backstory? We learn Paul was an only son, his Pa was a woman-hater, his mother a child beater. And other doings where Paul has much to mull over: Georges' affair with another farmer's wife (Paul witnesses Georges having sex with her out in the woods), Georges converting the very room in the farmhouse Paul set aside as a memorial to his Pa to be a special, fancy room for Vulva; Georges teaching Paul's children how to paint; Georges' philosophy of love.
I highly, highly recommend With the Animals. I could go on, but I'll let Noëlle Revaz have the last word. Art lover that I am, here's one quote of which I'm particularly fond: "All the youngsters is inside, for outside the sky's thundery and it's Sunday as well so there's no school, and after the pork, the sauce, and the noodles, and the things you gorge yourself on with the Good Lord's blessing, Georges he said it'd be a grand idea to stay at the table all of us and take out the brushes and paint what we'd like or whatever comes into our heads. All the youngsters said yes, and I said we'll have to see, seeing that since I was a child, since before I grew up and got big and mature and broadened out, I've never taken up any paints, apart from the brown one on the gates. Georges he said: "You can do what you like, everyone's free." and then one of the youngsters said to do the house, and all the others set about it, and me and Georges as well."
Swiss author Noëlle Revaz, born 1968
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