THE FRIEND
Tiffany Tavernier
(Sabine Wespieser, 280 pages, 2021)
***LONGLISTED FOR THE PRIX DU LIVRE INTER 2021***
***LONGLISTED FOR THE Grand Prix RTL/Lire 2021***
***TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE HERE***
It is a Saturday morning like any other: Thierry is making coffee while feeling satisfied about the kitchen terrace he just built. Lisa, his wife, is still asleep. Not much has changed since they moved into the house years ago, aside from the departure of their grown son Marc, now living far away in Vietnam, and the recent passing of their beloved dog.
Thierry is about to go for his usual walk along the riverbank when he hears a caravan of cars approaching, quite unusual in their quiet countryside. He opens his door to an unreal scene: police vehicles and ambulances, a SWAT team emerging from the adjacent forest, all converging on the lone house next to theirs. Stupefied, he witnesses the arrest of his neighbors, the Delries. For Thierry, the nightmare has just begun. How is he supposed to go on living after discovering that his best and only friend, Guy, is a serial killer, and that his wife, the fragile and depressive Chantal, is an accomplice to the rape and murder of young women?
At first, Thierry resists any change to his routine. His uneventful life is centered around his hard-earned home, his factory job, and most of all his unwavering love for Lisa. But how can he continue to keep the world at bay when he must face intruding journalists camping at his doorsteps, co-workers’ curious glances, and texts from distant family members that now animate his usually silent cell phone? And, of course, there is the insistent questioning of the police inspector in charge of the investigation, since some of the missing victims’ bodies have yet to be located. Thierry and Lisa must retrace every one of their interactions with the monstrous couple. The sensitive Lisa immediately falls apart, but the introverted Thierry, a man set in his ways, stubbornly resists the unraveling of their tranquil world.
Oscillating between anger, denial, and grief, Thierry is forced to revisit the course of his friendship with Guy, with whom he shared a keen appreciation of the natural world and a passion for insects. Everything they shared and enjoyed takes on a new and sinister meaning. Searching for an answer to the question that torments him—how could he have ignored that his only friend was the embodiment of evil?—he must abandon his usual coping mechanisms so as not to lose everything—especially his wife and love of his life, Lisa. Even his boss orders him to take a leave of absence. Unmoored from his niche in the world, Thierry takes to the road and finds his way back to his grandfather’s farm, a place long abandoned—like all his past.
With its gripping plot and keen psychological insights, The Friend takes us into the stream of consciousness of a man forced by dreadful circumstances to revisit his own darkness and childhood trauma he has spent a lifetime ignoring. In this magnificent portrait of a tormented soul, Tavernier continues to probe the human psyche’s obstinate capacity to redeem itself.
Tiffany Tavernier is the author of several books including Roissy (Sabine Wespieser, 2018), Isabelle Eberhardt: Un destin dans l’Islam (Tallandier, 2016), À table! (Seuil, 2008), A Bras le corps (Flammarion, 2003), L’homme blanc (Flammarion, 2000), and Dans la nuit aussi le ciel (Seuil, 2000). As a screenwriter, she has co-written two films, Ça commence aujourd’hui/It All Starts Today and Holy Lola, directed by Bertrand Tavernier.