Queffélec, Yann 1949-

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Queffélec, Yann 1949-

PERSONAL:

Born September 4, 1949, in Paris, France; son of Henri Queffélec (an author).

ADDRESSES:

Agent— c/o Author Mail, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 13 rue du Montparnasse, 75006 Paris, France.

CAREER:

Has worked as a journalist for Le Nouvel Observateur. Has appeared on television and in the film Narco, 2004.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prix Goncourt, 1985, for Les Noces barbares.

WRITINGS:

Béla Bartók, Mazarine (Paris, France), 1981.

Le Charme noir (title means "Black Charm"), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1983.

Les Noces barbares, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1985, translated by Linda Coverdale as The Wedding, Macmillan (New York, NY), 1987.

La Femme sous l'horizon, Julliard (Paris, France), 1988.

Le Maître des chimères, Julliard (Paris, France), 1990.

Prends garde au loup (novel; title means "Watch Out for the Wolf"), Julliard (Paris, France), 1992.

La Ménace, France Loisirs (Paris, France), 1993.

Disparue dans la nuit: Roman (title means "Disappeared in the Night"), Grasset (Paris, France), 1994.

Et la force d'aimer (title means "And the Power of Love"), Grasset (Paris, France), 1996.

Happy Birthday, Sara (novel), Grasset (Paris, France), 1997.

Noir animal, ou La Ménace, Bartillat (Etrepilly, France), 1997.

Toi, l'horizon (title means "You, Oh Horizon"), Cercle d'Art (Paris, France), 1999.

Osmose (title means "Osmosis"), Robert Laffont (Paris, France), 2000.

Le Soleil se lève à l'ouest, Bartillat (Paris, France), 2001.

Boris après l'amour, Fayard (Paris, France), 2002.

(With Jeanne Champion) Idoles, Éditions Cercle d'art (Paris, France), 2002.

Vert cruel, Bartillat (Paris, France), 2003.

Moi et toi: roman, Fayard (Paris, France), 2004.

Les Affamés: nouvelles, Fayard (Paris, France), 2004.

Ma première femme (novel), Fayard (Paris, France), 2005.

La Dégustation: 1973-1974 (novel), Fayard (Paris, France), 2005.

Author of preface to The Sea, by Philip Plisson, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 2002; novels have been published in German, Korean, Czech, Chinese.

ADAPTATIONS:

Les Noces barbares was adapted for film, 1987.

SIDELIGHTS:

Yann Queffélec, who began writing at the age of twelve, started his career as a literary journalist for Le Nouvel Observateur. Queffélec's fic- tion is characterized by an interest in the primal or elemental and the pathological. Another aim of his writing is to trace how the will to commit violence is born. He often recalls a classic French naturalist, such as Emile Zola, in his fix on the twin forces of heredity and environment. An important difference is that Queffélec's novels are both fiction and metafiction, which is writing about the act of writing. They combine violent plots with complex style and perspectives.

Queffélec's first novel, Le Charme noir ("Black Charm"), concerns a sadistic alcoholic drifter who becomes a rapist and murderer. The narrative uses both the first and third persons. Some of Queffélec's bestknown novels are his third, Les Noces barbares ("Savage Wedding"), for which he received the Prix Goncourt, and Le maître des chimères ("Master of Illusion"), which is considered by some to be his best work up to that time. Les Noces barbares is the harrowing story of the gang rape of thirteen-year-old Nicole Blanchard and the birth of her son, Ludo. The child of this rape, Ludo is the ultimate victim— spurned by all, but especially by his mother. Lovestarved, denied any semblance of humanity, the only kindness he experiences comes from his stepfather, Micho, an elderly widower who marries Nicole. The novel is organized into three parts: a recounting of Ludo's childhood while confined in his grandparents' attic by his mother; his institutionalization in the Centre de Saint-Paul, a home for mental defectives; and his escape from the asylum, followed by a climactic incestuous confrontation with his mother by the sea (climactic scenes in Queffélec's novels often take place against a marine background.) Ludo's story is told through interior monologue in an idiom specially invented by the author for him. A meditation on innocence and guilt, Les Noces barbares is also full of elemental symbolism using fire and water.

The antihero of Le maître des chimères, Pavin, is a consummate actor and master of disguise. In myriad ways he denies and defies reality. Both a sacrificer of others and a victim, he is possessed by a death wish and, though he is searching for himself, he is also in self-denial. The reader is kept wondering what Pavin so desperately seeks to escape from; why he is pursued by inner demons and convulsed by nightmares; why he is obsessed by the Shakespearean character Malvolio; and what is the source of his death wish. The telling of the novel in both first and third person helps emphasize the instability of its main character. Queffélec's next novel, Prends garde au loup ("Watch Out for the Wolf") shows how fear of time and change can lead to sexual repression and violence. The protagonist, Toni, has been obsessed since childhood with the idea of marrying his young cousin Maï; at first she seemed to consent to this. However, as she grows up, Maï becomes interested in other men, and Toni's friend Julius impregnates her. Toni's erotic fantasies appear to be a refuge from his miserable, dysfunctional family life: his father is a recluse who is also in retreat from reality, and his mother has become bitter, careworn, and possibly mentally unstable. Toni retreats farther and farther into himself and away from reality. Set in a mephitic marsh—"Les Sphaignes"—the novel presents a psychosocial and moral quagmire.

The author intended Disparue dans la nuit: Roman ("Disappeared in the Night") to convey a message about urban squalor in contemporary France. He sets this novel in Marseille, a city of extremes in which the affluent and indigent jostle with each other. The port city is full of drug addicts, among them thirteen-yearold Léna. After David, Léna's father, abandons his family, the child begins a descent into helpless poverty and addiction. (In this work, as in Osmose, the first and final chapters carry the main action, framing the remainder that is told chiefly through flashbacks.) In Et la force d'aimer ("And the Power of Love"), a convicted murderess, Mona, escapes after eight years in prison, joining forces with a lover in Paris to find Eveline, her daughter by Tom, the man she killed. Tom had planned to abandon Mona because he did not wish her to bear their child. Born in prison, Eveline was given up for adoption. Mona herself comes from a broken home, her father having abandoned her mother and herself. She catches up with Eveline, but the child at first refuses to acknowledge her mother. It is only when police helicopters are closing in on Mona that Eveline cries, "Sauve-toi, maman" ("Save yourself, Mother"). The title refers to the power of love, which often overcomes human beings' efforts to control it. It is worth observing that Queffélec lost his own mother in adolescence and that he has declared that one never recovers from such a loss.

Queffélec's following work, Happy Birthday, Sara, was inspired by a news story. Dedicated to the captain and victims of the ship Estonia, it is about the foundering of the ferry between Tallin, Estonia, and Stockholm, Sweden. The action pans from the luxurious life of the upper decks to the cold and gloom below deck, finally immersing the reader in the full panic of shipwreck. The story is told by Sara Johanson on the eve of her eighteenth birthday. She is the daughter of a former captain of the Estonia, who was dismissed for refusing to expose the vessel to the risks taken by his successor.

Osmose ("Osmosis") is a study of jealousy and a double murder. Queffélec believes that professional jealousy may be mastered, but that personal jealousy cannot be. Furthermore, he holds that excessive love is no longer love, for it becomes selfish possessiveness. As Osmose opens, Pierre Loupiens is beginning to serve a ten-year sentence for murder on the prisonisland of Desertas. There follows a flashback to the murder committed by Pierre and also to the murder of his mother, Nelly, by Pierre's father. The narrative moves back and forth between the lives of Nelly and Marc and of Pierre and Marc and is framed by a present-day narrative. Queffélec interweaves various narrative threads, using different styles and kinds of language, in a complex manner. The novel raises the question whether Pierre has been predestined to become a murderer through genetic or environmental forces.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Thompson, William, editor, The Contemporary Novel in France University Press of Florida (Gainesville, FL), 1995, pp. 331-351.

PERIODICALS

French Review, March, 1987, Josette J. Smith, review of Les Noces barbares, pp. 663-664; October, 1991, Paul Raymond Côté, review of Le Maître de chimères, pp. 173-174; May, 1994, James S. Williams, review of Prends garde au loup, pp. 1107-1108; February, 1996, Paul Raymond Côté, review of Disparue dans la nuit: Roman, pp. 527-528; April, 1998, Dominique S. Thévenin, review of Et la force d'aimer, pp. 881-882; May, 1999, Dominique S. Thévenin, review of Noir animal ou la ménace, p. 1157; December, 1999, Janet T. Letts, review of Happy Birthday, Sara, pp. 384-385; March, 2002, Dominique S. Thévenin, review of Osmose, pp. 829-830.

New York Times, November 19, 1985, "Prix Goncourt Awarded to Yann Queffélec," p. C16.

New York Times Book Review, January 10, 1988, Deirdre Bair, review of The Wedding, p. 20.

Times Literary Supplement, March 4, 1988, Ann Moseley, review of The Wedding, p. 244.

World Literature Today, summer, 1984, Danielle Chavy Cooper, review of Le Charme noir, pp. 386-387; summer, 1986, Maria Green, review of Les Noces barbares, p. 440; spring, 1989, Danielle Chavy Cooper, review of La Femme sous l'horizon, p. 278; spring, 1993, Emile J. Talbot, review of Prends garde au loup, pp. 325-326; spring, 1997, Emile J. Talbot, review of Et la force d'aimer, p. 342; spring, 2001, Steven Daniell, review of Osmose, p. 354.