Un peu tard dans la saison

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Germany (Nautilus)

Presentation

In 2015 or so, an unexplained and still covered up phenomenon spreads among the society and throws the government into a panic. For lack of any better word, it has been called the “Eclipse”. Thousands of people – from Minister to nurse, from housewife to big boss – suddenly decide to leave everything behind, to drop it, to give up, to disappear.

While France and Europe are sinking into chaos, torn between terrorism and social rebellion, Guillaume Trimbert, a weary middle-aged writer at the end of the road, is likely to be one of the candidates to the “Eclipse”.

It is at least the opinion of Agnès Delvaux, a young woman working as a secret service captain. But is that the only reason why she is spying on him, ready to interfere with his private life and intimacy, thus disobeying orders from her superiors?

Seventeen years later, in a remote place of the southern region of Gers, where a new civilization is born – the “Softness” –, Agnès observes her daughter Ada and, meanwhile, remembers her past with Trimbert – that man who changed her life precisely when the world was on the verge of disruption.

Seizing one more time one of his favourite subjects – the political struggle, civil disobedience and extreme left-wing groups –, which he heartily combines with a reflexion upon love relationships among adults who are no longer young and passionate, Jérôme Leroy portrays a political and sentimental helplessness that destroys the frontiers between fiction and essay.

Meanwhile, he digs deeper into the autobiographic vein he had started with Jugan. Un peu tard dans la saison is a vertiginous and unmasking novel of anticipation.

Jérôme Leroy was born in 1964 in Rouen. His novels Le Bloc (Prix Michel Lebrun, 2012) and L’Ange gardien (Prix des lecteurs des Quais du Polar, 2015) were published by Gallimard. La Table Ronde has published Un Dernier verre en Atlantide (2010), Les Jours d’après (2015), Sauf dans les chansons (2015) and Jugan (2015) and, in the series La Petite Vermillon: Monnaie bleue (2009), La Minute prescrite pour l’assaut (2017) and Comme un fauteuil Voltaire dans une bibliothèque en ruine (2017)

“Both a sentimental thriller and an anticipation novel, Un peu tard dans la saison arouses our deeply buried fears and our lost illusions. As well as a little bit of hope. A very great novel.” Le Progrès de Lyon