Nevermore

by Marie Redonnet, Jordan Stump (Translator), Jordan Stump (Introduction)

Overview

When Deputy Willy Bost arrives in the mysterious border town of San Rosa, he does not know why he has been sent there or what he will find. What he encounters, gradually, is an obscure network of private and public relations tarnished by corruption, ambition, manipulation, and deceit. Nothing is clear in the workings of this sinister city; and no one, including Willy Bost, is altogether innocent. Murder, bombings, deceptions, seductions-all come to the fore in this spellbinding portrait of a society that seems both absurd and real.

Nevermore is Marie Redonnet's fifth novel. Her earlier novels display her talent for capturing the unique voices and personalities of isolated women. Nevermore reflects her equally great gift for portraying the workings-and failures-of whole societies.

Born in Paris in 1947, Marie Redonnet taught for a number of years in a suburban lycée before deciding to pursue a writing career full time. Since her volume of poetry Le Mort & Cie appeared in 1985, she has published five novels, a novella, short stories, and three dramatic works.

Jordan Stump is the translator of Marie Redonnet's Hôtel Splendid, Forever Valley, and Rose Mellie Rose (Nebraska 1994). He is an assistant professor of French at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803289598
Publisher:	UNP - Bison Books
Publication date:	08/01/1996
Series:	European Women Writers
Pages:	125
Product dimensions:	4.75(w) x 7.50(h) x 5.25(d)

About the Author

Jordan Stump is the translator of Marie Redonnet’s Hôtel Splendid, Forever Valley, and Rose Mellie Rose (Nebraska 1994). He is an assistant professor of French at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

This transfer to San Rosa, on the west coast, just next tothe border, was not what Willy Bost had dreamt of. Buthe wants to forget what he had dreamt of, just as he wantsto forget the past. On the first page of the notebook hebought just before he left for San Rosa, he wrote in redink: It is forbidden to remember the past. It is forbidden tocompare the present with what I had dreamt of. He chosethat particular notebook because it fit into the insidepocket of his jacket, so that it would always be withinreach. As if he were going to need an assistant in SanRosa, and had decided that this notebook would be hisassistant.

Once famous for its bay and its volcano, San Rosa hasbecome a real boomtown since the reopening of the border.That is what Willy Bost knows of San Rosa, afterhaving read the guidebook. He also knows that no onewants to be appointed to San Rosa. They must havesent him there because they couldn't care less what hewants, and because he is considered undesirable in HighPlaces. They couldn't fire him because he had never doneanything to justify such a punishment, so instead theytransferred him to San Rosa, without regard for his wishes.His wishes, too, belong to the past, and he will haveto forget them. They told him nothing about the position,only that he would act as deputy to CommanderRoney Burke.

It took him three days on the highway to get to San Rosa.The Pontiac, which he had bought for next to nothingthe day before he left, is not made for such a long trip.Every hour, he has to stop and let the engine cool off. Itoverheats as soon as he steps on the accelerator. The outsidethermometerreads 105 degrees. The air conditioningdoesn't work. He is soaking wet and his eyes are burningwhen he stops at the last service station before San Rosato let the engine cool off and to go have a drink in the bar.

Coming out of the bar, he feels much better. The Cokehas already produced its invigorating effect. But he didnot foresee that the Pontiac would decide that the tripwas over as far as it was concerned. No matter what hetries, even the crank, there is no way to get it started. Themechanic on duty told him the valves were blown andthat he would need a new cylinderhead. That was how hemet Cassy Mac Key. She has just parked her coupe next tothe Pontiac. The coupe immediately catches his eye. It isan old model, no longer on the market. He would surelycompliment her on it if he were not so preoccupied bythe Pontiac which absolutely will not start.

Cassy Mac Key is very elegant in her white poplin dress,which looks so immaculate that it might have just comefrom the cleaner's. She notices that he is having mechanicalproblems, and very kindly offers to help him. It's a strokeof luck that she's going to San Rosa like he is, and that

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from NEVERMORE by Marie Redonnet. Copyright © 1994 by POL.
Translation copyright © 1996 University of Nebraska Press.Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Editorial Reviews

In 1994, Nebraska released Redonnet's triptych (Htel Splendid, Forever Valley and Rose Mellie Rose); in 1995, Candy Story; and this year, Nevermore, the last of the five short novels currently available by the French writer. They are all very much of a piece: claustrophobic, timeless, usually set in some slightly surreal, always seedy place (a hotel in a swamp; a corrupt seaside resort). Here these settings are the Fuch Circus and the Babylon nightclub in San Rosa, a vaguely frontier-Western town gone to pot and haunted by nearby sinister "camps" where the prodigal deputy, Willy Bost, lost both parents. The Babylon and the Fuch Circus are sites for murders, intrigues and secrets revealed, and there is an appropriately freakish cast of charactersthe evil nightclub owner, Cassy Mac Key, and her mute, dwarf sidekick; the new chanteuse; Nina, the wise Fat Lady; Goppy, the hunchback; and Lizzie Malik, the one-time acrobat whose career was ended by a sawed-through rope. There's some grizzly sex, but there's also a love story that ends well and a corrupt political race that does not. But mostly there's Redonnet's writing. Wry and darkly detached, it's like a good French noir filmthe cutting, the angles and especially the shadows can make it hard to follow, but they also make it undeniably and eerily evocative. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The characters and places in this slender, taut French novel are vaguely familiar and American-sounding. Willy Bost, a mirthless functionary with an irrepressible sexual desire and a past he cannot face, is transferred by High Places to San Rosa, a "west coast" town "on the border," known for its volcano. Willy Bost is clueless of the rat's nest he has fallen into: The town's best real estate is controlled by the omnivorous Gobbs, and President Hardley, who frequents the sinister Babylon club, run by the mysterious former owner of the legendary Fuch Circus, Dora Atter, has been murdered in the pissotire. San Rosa is a petri dish of self-interest. Yet in the end there is redemption through violent death and love. Redonnet's poetry, plays, and novels, most recently Candy Story (Univ. of Nebraska Pr., 1995), are not well known in America, though this work combining her trademark restraint with backhanded humor la Beckett will surely win new fans. Another excellent translation by Stump; for literature collections.Amy Boaz, "Library Journal"

Library Journal