This novel is the saga of families that should never have met. From working-class backgrounds to aristocracy, Christine is the daughter of an ambassador and the half-sister of Philippe, a wealthy and idle teenager. She lives between her communist grandparents and this father who cannot or will not acknowledge her. We are in the 1960s, and May 1968 will become the backdrop of this novel.
Françoise Chandernagor, through a multiplication of characters, has deliberately tangled the story. When she becomes the narrator, recounting the adventures of her numerous heroes and heroines, she gives her novel a masterful dimension, and the reader finds themselves alongside Christine when she makes love for the first time with a young Italian; they are, above all, two lost children in the underbelly of Rome.
This novel shows us a society in full decadence; the foundations are rotten, worm-eaten, and everything is falling apart. There are also the fakes: intellectuals, writers, artists, a whole world built on appearances and falsehoods. Politics, with its backstage, is also described to us without hiding anything.
This artificial world is revealed to us through this novel, whose title: “The Incomparable” is very well chosen. In the end, only the old grandfather Brassard is worthy, for he has not sold his soul to the devil. Christine, for her part, seems truly lost in a world where she has forgotten where she comes from and another world where she is still not really accepted.
It is a study of manners, a deserved and acerbic portrayal of this society where ultimately one sells oneself for a dish of lentils.
Thierry Jan
