But it is in that more alive and more endearing

Welcome to the club! This is a fortifying French keypad, more than 750 pages, which does not drowns in formalism and the claim; "The incorrigible optimists Club", first novel of Jean-Michel Guenassia, fifty years, is a Merry book, gasped, who said critical things without abandoning its bias of lightness and generosity. Fine storyteller, writer opens wide its arms to readers of all backgrounds to evoke the years 1950-1960, period key to our contemporary history. Fifteen total marked by three events: the Algeria war, the advent of rock'n roll and the bankruptcy of communist ideals.

Trial of communism

The hero of the book, Michel Marini, a young ado very mature for her age, is shared between two families: his biological family - trend "rital coco" on the side of father, right French Algeria on the side of mother - and his adoptive family, the incorrigible optimists Club, a group of refugees from the East which meets to play chess in the arrière-salle of a café. A place legendary, since to invite two great intellectuals of the time: Jean-Paul Sartre and Joseph Kessel.

As all optimists, Guenassia has no illusions about the world. The prologue, which lies in April 1980 at the funeral of Sartre, sets the tone. The Existentialist philosopher is described as "a man who is wrong on everything or almost, wrong in all circumstances and has put his talent to defend the indefensible conviction". The novelist drives the nail: "nothing will change, as we know." There is not better society.

Even if he does it with humour and tenderness - unrecoverable condition for lost men-, it is the trial without appeal of communism he draws throughout the book conveniently crossing the exceptional destinies of Russians, Romanians, Czechs, Hungarians, all victims of the Soviet steamroller. Guenassia is not a "leave": the manner in which he pins the Delaunay, the maternal family of Michel, who is enhanced under collaboration, is also corrosive.

Terrible secret

While the young Michel learns life - family woes and love, but also the pleasure of reading and the madness of the rock'n roll-, policy between torrents in his life. With the war of Algeria, which he delights his brother and his best friend; and with the cold war, which pace the daily lives of the refugees of the club. Its members reveal all in turn their incredible epic - the color characters who survive in exile is already a gift from the sky (even if the sky is empty).

The writer control without fail his story, until the final chapters, where it becomes more serious with the revelation of a terrible secret that binds several members of the club. It is moved, instructed, enlivened by the unbridled story which takes back us without precautions of use in our recent past. Of course, the book suffers from some weaknesses: a style sometimes platitudes, a tendency to repetition. But it is in that more alive and more endearing.

While the romanesque autofiction knows his swan song, the advent of this large book full of history and stories sound the fury of the French novel. Jean-Michel Guenassia already appears as a serious candidate for the Goncourt. At the risk of an incorrigible optimist.