Agnès Desarthe is a natural storyteller. Just turned 34, she has already published 16 children’s books and four novels for adults, one of which, “Five Photos of My Wife” (Flamingo), has at last come out in English.
“I’ve been told stories all my life,” she explains over tea in her elegant apartment by the Cirque d’Hiver. “I was in a family of great storytellers, and we had about an hour each night of storytelling when we were children.” There was no reading, “it was just telling, oral.” Russian family sagas and traditional Libyan tales, “that’s what we got for supper.”
Desarthe has lived all her life in Paris. But her father — well-known pediatrician and writer Aldo Naouri — is a Libyan Jew who reached France via Algeria, and her mother’s family comes from a Jewish village in what is now Moldavia. France is home, but “the echoes are so much louder. I feel better acquainted with Russia and North Africa.”
This fertile family history is reflected in “Five Photos,” the story of Max Opass, a retired Russian Jew whose beautiful but glacial wife Telma has just died. To honor her memory, he digs out five snapshots of her and commissions five different artists to paint her portrait. As he wanders around Paris trying to capture the essence of his dead spouse, he reflects on their life together, which began in a village on the steppes more than 50 years ago. The more he tries to possess her in a painting, the more he realizes how little he knew her, and how much she scared him.
The setup — a confused old man, a Jew among Gentiles, the shadow of the holocaust — could be pretty bleak, if it weren’t for Desarthe’s snappy tone and ironic, unsentimental humor. For example, Max “knew some Jews that would have preferred to have been born Catholic, and not just for the practical reasons (no pogroms, no camps, ham at every meal), but because in some ways, they found it more refined, less garish; and the very sound of the word ‘Catholic’ had resonance to it like a peal of bells, a little waltz, a ditty. ‘Jewish’ was dispatched, an onomatopoeia for flight, a sort of desperate ‘Off we go’.”
The flashbacks are balanced by comic scenes, including very funny encounters with a conceptual artist and a widow with the serious hots for Max. None of which takes away from the seriousness or subtlety of the story.
Desarthe says that one of her themes is “You don’t have to choose beauty.” Max realizes that he picked a totem wife when he could have married her dumpy but loving friend. He fell for the power of images, when he would have been better off “renouncing the surface, the beauty of things, to look for something more interesting.”
Though she is young and beautiful herself, Desarthe confesses that she feels very much at home with such a grown-up story. "This is easy! This comes naturally! An old man with all his memories,” she says. “I don’t know why.” She would never be able to write about young women who go clubbing: “I don’t know the way to that land. I have no idea how you get there. For me, writing the story of Max, a story of grieving, this is more familiar, it’s my own land. Maybe it’s because I’ve listened to people who had that kind of story to tell.”
Old people and children; she is attracted to outsiders, “people that live in the margins of life.” It is easy for me to imagine that I am a four-year-old or a six-year-old. I can write the story of a very old person, because what I like about them is that they have no social power.”
Like her good friend Marie Desplechin, author of Sans Moi, she feels more at ease writing for children. “Everyone knows what they are good at; you know that you are good at tennis but not very good at skiing,” she explains. “I know that I can write children’s books. I found my voice.” Writing for adults is much harder, she has had to train. “I want my novels to be really simple, like children’s books, because that’s what I like as a reader.”
Desarthe’s first job was as a translator, and she speaks excellent English with a wonderfully plummy British accent. This reflects another facet of her work, her love for English and American writers. This also began at home: her parents may have spoken French, Arabic, Russian and Yiddish, but when they didn’t want the kids to understand they switched to English.
All these aspects — her far-flung Jewish roots, her feel for children’s stories, her love of English — place her firmly outside the French establishment and at the forefront of a new generation of writers. “We’re into fiction. That’s the only thing that we share,” she says. “We like stories: even if we use our own life, we make it a story.” Storytelling has been so looked down upon by French intellectuals, there had to be a backlash, and that’s what’s happening. But it’s not an organized movement, it’s just natural.”
Agnès Desarthe’s adult novels — Quelques Minutes de Bonheur Absolu, Un Secret Sans Importance, winner of the Prix Inter, Cinq Photos de Ma Femme and Les Bonnes Intentions – are published in French by Editions Olivier, and her children’s books by Ecole des Loisirs. Flamingo will follow “Five Photos” with their translation of Les Bonnes Intentions, “Good Intentions,” early next year.
