Olivier Bourdeaut had struck a blow with his first novel released in 2016, Waiting for Bojangles, which had charmed readers, won over critics and won numerous awards. Florida, her third novel, still swims in the waters of mental illness and dysfunctional family, except that the tenderness and empathy therein has turned to ferocity and dark black humor.
Posted on May 23, 2021 at 5:00 p.m.
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We follow the self-destructive revenge plan of Elizabeth, ex-eternal second mini-miss, who is deeply angry with her mother for making her a doll, and her father for letting her do it.
The first part of the book, as Elizabeth races across the country in Florida with her victory-obsessed mother, is downright fun and successful. The more and more recalcitrant side of the young competitor is enjoyable, and the description of this ultrakitsch universe where little girls are instrumentalised and have their childhood stolen is implacable.
The rest of the story follows Elizabeth’s monomaniac quest to make her parents pay. To achieve this, her body will become as much a weapon as a ball, which she transforms according to her obsessions. She will experience a real descent into hell in a post-September 11 America, enraged, stubborn, determined… and not particularly lovable either.
Elizabeth’s “voice” is ironic and explosive at will and we of course want to see how far it will go. We also obviously detect the metaphor on the difficult takeover of women over their bodies and the decline of America. But if Florida has pace and is certainly great entertainment, the novel feels a bit tacky, perhaps because of the distance (gender, age, country) between the character and its author.
Result: even if the story is told in the first person, we too look at Elizabeth as a fairground animal, and the half-fig, half-grape ending does not help matters.
Despite its qualities and because of the expectations, Florida would thus be something like a half-disappointment… or a half-success.
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Florida
Olivier Bourdeaut
Finitude
256 pages
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