FICTION: No and MeBy Delphine de Vigan, translated by George Miller Bloomsbury, 246pp, £9.99
ME LIVES with her parents in an apartment in Paris; her mother has retreated into silent depression, while her father tries to make everything better which only emphasises how upset he is. She is 13 and her name is Lou Bertignac. She is clever, imaginative and deeply hurt. Her thoughts are complex, caught as she is between the contrasting worlds of childhood and adult reality. Information intrigues her, a range of scientific surveys preoccupy her and she enjoys grammar; to her it holds many answers. It is not surprising that this novel took Germany and Italy as well as France by storm; it is intelligent without being clever, moving without being fey. Delphine de Vigan tells a story that is blunt, even brutal, with immense empathy. Lou is damaged, so damaged she can share the pain felt by others. She is a heroine who still believes in miracles.
As her home life is dominated by subdued grief, Lou finds tentative relief at school, where she excels, and through her surprise friendship with the good-looking and difficult Lucas. Younger than her classmates and physically tiny, Lou has come among the more normal, having left her previous school which catered for gifted children.
There are many similarities with Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time(2003). But unlike Haddon's narrator, Christopher Boone, Lou is not autistic, only different. Her parents have been traumatised by the sudden death of their younger daughter. The tragedy is never discussed, but it seeps through their daily life like a great black stain. Lou knows she is that bit different and manifests all the guilt of the survivor. A similar guilt stalks her academic success; she feels she is "silent and a loner" and does not want to stand out, so she decides against doing a project which involves giving a presentation.
Her teacher, Mr Marin, insists she does. Lou doesn’t have to think of a topic. Something has been troubling her, the plight of the homeless. She announces she is going to interview a street girl. Emotions fascinate Lou: “I often go to Austerlitz station on Tuesdays or Fridays, when I get out of school early. I go to watch the trains leaving. There is so much emotion. I really like that, watching people’s emotions. That’s why I never miss football matches on TV . . . In railway stations, though, it’s different – you’ve got to work out what people are feeling from their expressions, from their gestures and movements.”
Lou is an observer, self- conscious and intense. Her world is divided into what it was like before the morning her mother discovered Lou’s younger sister dead, and what it has been like since.
There is no sentimentality, no emotional manipulation; de Vigan has convincingly evoked the mind and thoughts of a sensitive, philosophical adolescent who has learnt how to take comfort from facts. “All my life I’ve felt on the outside wherever I am – out of the picture, the conversation, at one remove, as though I were the only one able to hear the sounds or words that others can’t . . . As if I’m outside the frame, on the other side of a huge, invisible window.”
Lou may be unhappy, but she is not self-obsessed. During one of her sessions at the train station she had been approached by an older girl looking for a cigarette. Lou could offer her only some gum. The girl secures her cigarette elsewhere and then returns to Lou to ask why she is watching people, adding with a sharpness that becomes characteristic of her: “Isn’t there anyone to watch at home?” The stranger, No, is wearing dirty clothes and is defiant as well as desperate. She asks Lou for money, yet also quizzes her about herself. The meeting preoccupies Lou, who later wonders about the girl and how she ended up on the streets begging. “I imagined a secret hidden beneath the three jackets she’d been wearing, a secret stuck in her heart like a thorn, something she’s never told anyone.” This is the girl Lou decides to offer as her interviewee for her project on the homeless. Now she has to find her and persuade her to agree to being interviewed. Her efforts to win the older girl are touching, Lou, having been unintentionally excluded from her father’s efforts to restore his wife, her mother, wants someone to care for. No is far more than a project, she becomes a lifeline.
Not only is No homeless and unemployed, she is an alcoholic. Her life on the streets has hardened her, and in trying to help her Lou becomes increasingly vulnerable. De Vigan tells the story through the girl’s thoughts; there is innocence and some naivety yet always an honesty that not only drives the narrative but keeps the reader in a state of wary alert. De Vigan never idealises No. Instead, we are presented with a character whose life has been destroyed by a relationship and almost obliterated by subsequent events. At no time does Lou appear as resilient as Harper Lee’s Scout, yet she shares her sense of purpose and, also, her courage.
“When I was little,” Lou recalls, “I used to spend hours in front of the mirror trying to get my ears to stay back. I thought I looked ugly and wondered if they could be fixed, maybe by squeezing my head into a bathing cap or a cycling helmet every day, summer and winter.”
Lou wants to fix No. Late in the novel after many steps forward, and even more steps backward in her bid to help No, Lou remembers the passage from Saint- Exupéry's classic, The Little Prince, in which the fox asks the prince to tame him. The boy doesn't understand. So the fox explains that if he tames him "we shall need one another". Lou now considers this in relation to her and No.
For a brief moment it seems as if de Vigan may look to the happy ever after. Lou asks her parents if No can move in with them. She does. For a while it goes quite well, but No has many problems. Then Lou’s friend Lucas becomes involved. Again, de Vigan avoids the predictable. Throughout the novel she balances Lou’s longing and determination. The writing is simple, yet never conceals the intelligence of the narrative nor of the narrator herself. All the while, Lou is beginning to realise that meaning means very little and that life “just lurches between stability and instability and doesn’t obey any law”. She also comes to understand that violence can also lurk in silence.
In a week in which another French novel, Muriel Barbery's witty fable, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, has been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Delphine de Vigan's eloquent, far more profound tale convincingly suggests that it is one of those special stories that everyone should read – and then think about, often and deeply.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
