La Foret Maures

MAURES Sébastien Berlendis Maures is an immersion in adolescence, amongst the pine trees of a campsite in La Londe-les-Maures where the narrator used to spend his holidays in the mid-eighties. The focal point is his grandparents' caravan, "party central", and meals shared under the canopy with his friends and uncles. The days roll by with gentle repetitiveness, around the beach, the dunes, the dance hall and the tennis courts. With a sensual and carnal tone, Maures recounts the discovery of girls' bodies, fantasised over but also caressed, away from prying eyes. "An enchanted interlude" according to Joseph, the grandfather, the guardian of the group's collective memories. Enchanted, despite the lingering presence of the war, with the unexploded shells on the beach, the bunker on the shingle, the cemetery holding the remains of the "salt workers" and the fires that threaten the forest. This paradise darkens with the inevitable "dispersal of the clan", the illness and death of the grandfather, and the rude awakening of adulthood. To add to the sense of disappearance, the floods ravage La Londe-les-Maures at the end of 2014 and carry all in their wake. The beauty of this refined piece of writing which revives a formative period, "an adolescence under the sun", lingers. Sébastien Berlendis lives in Lyon where he teaches Philosophy. He is the author of Une dernière fois la nuit and L'Autre Pays (Stock, "La Forêt").