Double blow for the Messin Laurent Petitmangin. The jury for the Stanislas Prize has hardly designated him as its 2020 winner, when that of the Gold Leaf of the city of Nancy places him in pole position in its selection for the start of the school year. Media Prize France Bleue, France 3, L’Est Républicain, “What it takes at night” is already an event book. A first novel at 50, when you are an employee of the Air France company, is often the promise of a manuscript that has matured for a long time, carried for years, concentrated, rarely drafted. Poignant and heartbreaking are often the words that come up to describe this harsh and dense novel, published at the Manufacture de livres. No unnecessary lengths, but a tight weft that explores the relationship between a father and his sons after the death of the mother. A novel of learning about life for three, about life itself.
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Human heartbreaking
Laurent Petitmangin recounts the relationship between a father and his sons, highlights all that it involves modesty and unspoken, and often the inability of the father to find the right words. Naturalist novel, even verist in the sense of Verga, the famous Italian novelist of the XIXe century, “What is needed at night” is the pearl of the new school year, dazzling, sensitive, which quickly stood out from the peloton of Lorraine discoveries of the Gold Leaf 2020. In the list of nominees, we can cite Marie Baudry, for “Ossip Ossipovitch”, with Alma editor, Arnaud Dudek for “We sometimes make waves” with Anne Carrière, or Isabelle Flaten for “The two marriages of Lenka” published by Realgar.
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