The Maid’s protocol

Guillaume Lavenant

(Éditions Rivages, 192 pages, 2019)

*** FOREIGN RIGHTS: RUSSIAN SOLD TO EKSMO *** 

 *** IN THE FINAL SELECTION for the 2019 PRIX medicis ***

*** long-listed for the 2019 Prix de Flore, prix stanislas, prix

premiere plume ***

*** WINNER OF THE People’s choice Prize - la foret des livres ***

*** TRanslation sample AVAILABLE ***

Guillaume Lavenant structures his riveting debut novel, The Maid’s Protocol, much like a procedure manual, adopting a formal device as exacting as the instruction it provides. From the first to the last line, a voice-over directs every step of a young newly hired maid, recruited to live in her employers’ comfortable home and watch over their young daughter, Elena. Little do they know that behind her unassuming demeanor, the maid’s words and actions are carefully scripted as she smoothly eases her way into the family and patiently gains their trust. She leaves nothing to chance; all that can be expected to happen has been thought through by a mysterious guru-like figure named Lewis.

The protocol laid out for her, imbued with Lewis’ incisive views on human psychology, guides the unnamed maid through her daily interactions with her employers, their two children, even their overly intrusive neighbor who’s forever tinkering with his motorbike in the alleyway. Over time, the young woman ingratiates herself with the couple. She bonds with the wife over an American TV series, and stirs up the husband’s unfulfilled desires. And every night, she imbeds into Elena’s subconscious images of The Forest Tales,a storybook that she had offered the child upon her arrival.

Lavenant gradually pushes the boundaries of comfort as his story progresses. When the young woman’s methodical undermining of the family’s emotional and physical moorings reaches its critical point, the novel takes on a new life. With the first part of her mission completed, her purpose revealed, the maid—and many like her embedded in suburban homes—steps into a world turned to chaos. As churches, banks, supermarkets, factories, and archives catch fire simultaneously in the middle of the night, the scale and ambition of Lewis’ vision reveals itself as nothing less than an onslaught on the order of things.

Lavenant’s novel starts like a psychological thriller and morphs midway into an enigmatic political parable. Starkly unsettling and visually compelling, The Maid’s Protocol leaves us reconsidering our society and habits: Is the reader the ultimate part of the protocol?

Guillaume Lavenant is a playwright and stage director. The Maid’s Protocol is his first novel.