Tiffany McDaniel conquered thousands of readers in France when Gallmeister published Betty. The publishing house is now republishing the first novel by the American writer.
” The heat came with the devil. It was the summer of 1984. The devil had been invited, but not the heat. However, we should have expected that. After all, isn’t the furnace an attribute of the devil? »
A few years before the dazzling romance that was Bettythe American writer Tiffany McDaniel published The summer when everything melted. Gallmeister now offers a reissue, translated by François Happe. Incandescent, overwhelming, but with a paradoxically evocative softness in writing, Tiffany McDaniel’s first novel exposes the aberrations of an unhealthy reality. Isn’t the end of innocence the deepest injustice?
Who invited the devil to Breathed?
While a brutal heat wave hits the small town of Breathed, deep in Ohio in the United States, in the middle of the summer of 1984, young Fielding comes across a little boy. Green eyes, black skin, alone, the child announces his name is Sal. He adds that he is the devil and claims to have been invited. The fact is, the day before, District Attorney Autopsy Bliss, Fielding’s father, had indeed posted an ad in the newspaper inviting the devil to come to town. This was wishful thinking—from a man no longer able to fully discern good and evil in his courtroom.
Could the devil really get to Breathed — incarnated as a child? In any case, Fielding’s family welcomes him into their home, Autopsy Bliss being convinced that he is above all a lost child, in need of help. But this arrival will upset the whole town. How could it be otherwise with the arrival of the devil, whether he is actually present or not? This is how Tiffany McDaniel plays with imaginaries — those that are paradoxically very real.
Moreover, the novelist herself warns, from the first page: the heat that falls on Breathed makes ” merge tangible realities ” as ” abstract things “. Among these abstractions, fear, faith, anger as well as the most reliable markers of common sense “. Except that common sense, in 1984, in the United States, is full of demons. Among them, racism, homophobia, the weight of traditions.
With a disillusioned pen, Tiffany McDaniel melts the whole of reality to poetically expose its demons. The readers of Betty will find the same dazzling there, but this previous novel can also be a good introduction to the work of the novelist.
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