Rage and desire

Alice Renard

(Editions Héloïse d’Ormesson, 160 pages, 2023)

***Winner of the Prix Meduse 2023 and Prix de la Vocation 2023***

***Selected for the Prix Litteraire du Monde and Prix Femina***

Isor is a strange girl, far from the stereotype of a young child; she doesn’t communicate, and doesn’t want to learn to read or write. Despite a battery of medical tests, nothing abnormal comes out. Her loving parents decide to keep her at home. An overprotected Isor meets Lucien, a secretive and isolated seventy-year-old neighbor. From then her life takes a different turn, for the best, and a ritual quickly settles in between these two, bringing a source of happiness to both the little girl and the senior.

A few years later, when an accident disrupts the life they’ve invented for themselves, Isor, now a teenager, immediately runs away to Sicily to carry out a mission for her dying friend: find Avni, Lucien’s estranged daughter. Along the way, she finally encounters a world big enough for her.

The construction of the book is inventive. In the first part, we navigate between the thoughts of the mother and father, with two opposite visions of their child’s needs. In the second part, we witness the tender and fun relationship between Lucien and Isor. The last part contains letters from Isor, who remains in Sicily, sent to her parents.

Rage and Desire is the portrait of a child who doesn’t fit into any boxes. It’s an eruptive story of love, emancipation, and reconciliation. Alice Renard shows an incredible maturity, and renders an original, funny, and deeply moving work of fiction.

Alice Renard is twenty-one years old, and Anger and Envy is her debut novel. She has been acclaimed by the press, and dubbed “the genius of the new literary season” (Nicolas Demorand, France Inter).