La Bleue Aujourd Hui Les Coeurs Se Desserrent

HEARTS OPENINGUnder option in Romania Over the course of three generations, the Deslorgeux family - industrialists from Rouen whose glory rests on manufacturing poplin - lose money, conviction and power. All that is left of them is little Lorette, living somewhere in the world. The Second World War and the rise to power of third world countries might explain the family's decline, but there is also a need to escape their destiny, to stay true to principles towards and against everything, to open up a heart so firmly constrained by provincial, Catholic, middle class expectations. The story revolves around the rivalry between two brothers. One escapes from a prison camp during the war, and refuses to talk about it, while the other flees the hardships of combat and takes refuge in painting. One marries and has children but walls himself in silence his whole life. He will run the family company. The other, who watched the woman he loved marry his brother, has no descendants. The family's last son is the one to speak out. Reading between the lines, as he reconstitutes past events, vital but painful questions emerge: What is a successful life? How should each of us life "our" life? What exactly do we inherit? With this portrait of a substantial middle class family in decline, Pascale Roze takes the reader through troubled times and weaves together conflicting destinies with acuity and tenderness. Pascale Roze won the Prix Goncourt in 1996 for her first novel, Le Chasseur Zéro. Stock has also published Un homme sans larmes (2005), L'eau rouge (2006) and Itsik (2008).