La traduction est de Pierre-Paul Durastanti parce que moi, j’ai renoncé.
Critics invited to review collections of short stories routinely begin by searching for what they have in common: for some kind of connecting thread or recurrent theme. Critical evaluation tends to be founded on the supposition that writers reveal themselves consistently in everything they write. For their own part, writers rarely think like that. Most, if not all, of them are permanently in search of something different to do: something that they, at least, have not done before, and, if possible, something that no one has done before. Writers may justifiably take pride in the hectic variety of a collection: its defiant resistance to any attempt to discover a repetitive motif or constant preoccupation; its insistence on questing for originality, versatility and creative ingenuity.
I am, therefore, glad to report that it is impossible to find any kind of connecting thread or recurrent preoccupation in Catherine Dufour’s collection of nine stories, which extend across a broad spectrum of concerns, speaking with markedly different narrative voices.