What do we keep from our first loves? What place do they occupy in our adult lives? With humor and delicacy, the author and journalist Caroline Michel addresses these questions in her second novel, “L’amour des grands”, published by Robert Laffont. We loved it.
“The love of the great” is a tender, intelligent and striking novel, which takes hold of a universal subject: our first loves and the place they occupy in our adult lives. To take us back to childhood and adolescence, and at the same time revive our first emotions, the author, Caroline Michel, has staged the character of Emmanuelle, 35, who goes to the wedding of her younger sister without being unaware that Vincent, her first love, will stroll among the guests. What will they have to say to each other? Where could their story have gone in fifteen years? How can he still disturb her years later?
Brilliantly built, “The Love of the Great” sails from past to present, then from present to past: While the wedding is in full swing, between vows at the town hall and caterpillar at midnight, Emmanuelle falls back on Vincent and finds herself rewinding the film of her youth by his side. A novel that takes us page after page, in the 90s, the thrills of an era and the traces they are able to leave in our hearts as grown-ups.
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Emmanuelle, by her name Dijon, is an endearing heroine with whom we identify from the first chapter: who wouldn’t be apprehensive to meet her great childhood love again? Who would not search for his words? Who would not stick his heavy uncle to the wine of honor to avoid greeting the one who, for a time, counted far too much? Caroline Michel carries us away thanks to a rhythmic pen, capable of handling humor and emotion on the same line, and gives us an end in several stages, which upsets as much as it questions.
The author, also a journalist for aufeminin (her articles can be found here) is also attached to the subject of passing time and would not come to contradict us if we reminded her, like that, that she is also the winner of the Write aufeminin literary prize 2012. Ten years already and ten years that we do not regret: after “89 months” (ed. Préludes), a first noticed novel, “L’amour des grands” is Caroline Michel’s second novel, a real favorite of writing.
“L’amour des grands”, by Caroline Michel, supported by the author Adèle Bréau, has been in bookstores since March 31, 2022 at Robert Laffont editions. Available at Fnac