Sanglier noir, pivoines roses

All rights available

Presentation

The houses have diamond-shaped shutters, and thoroughly well-kept flowerbeds and gardens. Up on the balcony, two big black poodles sit so still you’d think they were made of china. Elsewhere, a woman is hanging up her laundry to dry, carefully selecting the right pegs for all the clothes. In the fifteen short stories that make up this text, Gaëlle Heureux sets a minimalistic scene and fills it with true-to-life characters: a retired chartered accountant who makes boats out of matchsticks, a little boy at his great-grandmother’s bedside, a haberdasher blessed with a faithful customer, a monk who’s learning to swim… Then she puts herself in their shoes. Her boundless imagination is matched by such empathy that you can’t help believing in it all: the haberdasher’s strange fear that she’ll find a decapitated head in her kitchen bin, the cello stuck in the great-grandmother’s stomach, the monk’s secret passion for the beautiful Magali, who tries her best to get some fish out of the swimming pool… Recurring themes link the short stories together – fragile family ties, physical transformations and couples under strain. That’s why the far off world of Sanglier noir, pivoines roses is, strangely, not dissimilar to our own.

Gaëlle Heureux was born in 1970. She has a degree in law and in psychology, and lives and works in Bourg-en-Bresse. She publishes short stories in the Harfang review. Sanglier noir, pivoines roses is her first book.

"It is wonderfully dark, incisive and ironic, gently disturbing because it brings us back to our own lives and it often scratches, bothers and hurts. For all these reasons, this is a great book that one would like to offer to his neighbor so he can look at himself in the mirror." La Librairie Saint Christophe

"A handful of playlets drawn from ordinary lives that suddenly change (...) It is clever, funny and cruel." La Voix de l'Ain

"This first bittersweet book whispers in your ear and resonates true" Service Littéraire

"A handful of vitriolic short stories written by an unknown who deserves to be known... Two pages, sometimes three, for lives sketched on the spot by a wonderfully funny and cruel pen." Radio Classique