| In the Absence of Men
by Philippe Besson 2003 Translated from the French by Frank Wynne This slender novel, only 166 pages long, is poignant and beautiful. The narrator, Vincent de L’Étoile, is the sixteen year old son of an aristocrat. He has, he tells us many times, green, almond-shaped eyes, skin as soft as a girl’s, black hair and no moral values. Vincent is one of those knowing, preternaturally intuitive and mature characters one sometimes encounters in books, who make one feel one’s own teenage years were a time of arrested development. The year is 1916 and World War I is raging. Paris is empty of young men and news of mounting casualties arrives by the hour. In the midst of all this carnage Vincent lives a sheltered life. He attends the lycée Louis-le-Grand and is allowed a free rein by his detached, elderly parents. The story opens with his meeting an elderly (to his eyes) author called Marcel who, Vincent surmises, is attracted by his manner and the sway of his hips. They arrange to meet again. Marcel is, of course, Marcel Proust and Vincent is immensely flattered at being singled out by so eminent an author and treated as an equal. He has no illusions about the nature of Marcel’s interest - I said he was knowing! At the same time as this is going on Arthur Valès, the twenty-one year old son of Blanche, the governess, comes home for a week’s leave from the war. Only the thought of Vincent, whom he has previously viewed from afar, has kept him going through the horrors he has seen. Despite their differences in class and background, and despite Vincent’s being warned by his father about being too familiar with the lower orders, Arthur declares his love and they embark on a passionate relationship. Vincent spends his afternoons talking to Marcel and his nights making love with Arthur. When Arthur returns to the front Vincent realises how much he returns Arthur’s feelings of love. Arthur has a premonition that he is doomed and writes to Vincent telling him to forget him. Vincent cannot and writes to Marcel, who is by now at Illiers on family business, telling him of his relationship with Arthur. Marcel sympathises but tells him the relationship is doomed, that love and happiness are not synonymous and that in any case what they are doing is illegal. The inevitable happens: Arthur is killed. Vincent, unable to contain his grief, is constrained to tell Blanche of his love for Arthur when she demands to speak to him. She has silently observed Arthur and Vincent’s relationship and wants to know only that Arthur was loved. Vincent assures her that he was. She then confides her own particular secret, one she told not even Arthur, and Vincent’s world is turned upside down. He determines to leave Paris and everyone he knows: “I carry my dead with me. I take him on this journey from which I will not return except perhaps in death”. Summarised like this, the story is slight. Its power derives from the way it is told and the psychological insight the author brings to it. Clearly it would not make a Hollywood film for M. Besson has managed to write an entire novel without one Anglo-Saxon expletive and the translator hasn’t felt constrained to insert any. The author creates a tale of great beauty and feeling by mobilising the full resources of language to convey what he means both precisely and concisely. The style is sometimes rhetorical, sometimes poetic but always holds the reader’s attention. Although it is somewhat idiosyncratic (for example, there are no quotation marks and most of Vincent’s words are addressed to Arthur, Marcel, Blanche and himself rather than to the reader.) its peculiarities are not such as to hold up the narrative flow. This book lingers in the imagination long after it has been put down and should be on the reading list of anyone who appreciates a tale well-told. |
 In
the Absence of Men
by Philippe Besson Hardcover: 180 pages Carroll & Graf 2003) ISBN: 0786711612 French to English Translation Paperback: 176 pages Publisher: Vintage Books USA; (July 2003) ISBN: 0099437899 Contact Tony Heyes |
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