VSow to tell the story of the mountain without falling into the clichés of the genre? By staging a colorful human fauna around an imaginary summit, the Grand Cerviso. It is indeed around this totem that the colorful characters of Fantastic Synchrony (The fountain of Siloé, 2021) will meet, climb, test their libido, lose themselves, find themselves and build their existence.
There are no invincible warriors here, capable of facing the cold of madness, dancers from the peaks defying verticality, or even supercharged and chrono-dependent junkies on ultra-trail. No, simple mountain lovers who, for a weekend, compensate for their urban excesses with detoxification and regeneration cures in the wild world.
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By way of the lit or by the normal way.
We meet Manon, a graphic designer with a clownish look, who dreams of great natural settings, silence, purity. Rudy, an egotistical engineer obsessed with athletic performance. Julie, school teacher, shock climber, fed on organic seeds and adept of yoga. Or Louis, handsome, party animal of the extreme, owner of an advertising agency “a little marginal, a little mundane”, follower of urban cultures, who claims to be “non-sporting”. The story begins, moreover, with the meeting between this New Lyonnais and an exquisite young girl who shares her passion for the mountains with him. But from learning to live in a refuge to the fatal fall of two Spanish mountaineers by the north face of the Grand Cerviso and for whom he felt a sympathy, Louis sees his existence capsize, his certainties fly away. Something happened up there.
Very shaken, he came back here below with a little devil in his head who summons him to go back up there. From there, Yves Exbrayat introduces other protagonists with battered life trajectories that he makes intersect, then gradually converge towards the Grail. Whether they access it by the route of the lit or by the normal route, roped or in a wheelchair, it does not matter the style. The main thing is not there, but in the destination: the summit. The climax of a dream, the exhaustion of a space, but also of a meaning. To achieve this, you have to give the best of yourself, surpass yourself to go beyond the surrounding environment.
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Passion capable of shaking up existences
Passionate and inspired mountaineer, founding boss of the Maison de la montagne in Grenoble, host of the Mountain Cinema Meetings, Yves Exbrayat knows the mountains like the back of his hand. She has been sticking to him since her earliest childhood. He writes it and, above all, he loves it, like his heroes, whose passion he transmits here. Passion capable of shaking up existences and transforming people. In this second novel, after A month of emotion (JM Éditions, “Nouvelles d’en haut”, 2010), a nugget of cynicism that describes an expedition of tourists on a 7000 m of the Himalayas, we find the author’s offbeat style, a scathing humor, an art self-mockery, a tone, a subtle combination of experience, reflections and tender irony.
His earthy characters make people smile (Brigitte, senior nymphomaniac; the Bidochon family, repulsive and yet so warm), but also some memorable scenes in the shelters. The narration is fluid and pleasant, the building well constructed. A remarkable book that brings to mind the films of Cédric Klapisch and brings a breath of fresh air to the purring universe of mountain novels.
Fantastic Synchrony, Yves Exbrayat, La Fontaine de Siloé, 2021, 19.90 euros.