Anna, a conscientious but emotional vestal, has been condemned to death for breaking a sacred vase - the celebrated Esclarmonde chalice. Unbeknownst to Anna her mad scientist master makes her spirit leave her body. The experiment is a success and she arises unharmed into another era, where he loses track of her.
In the year 4666, Anna, having become a "retro costumier" at Thomasine Couture, lives with Ankh Delafontaine, a beautiful blonde medievalist, and goes horse riding at Etampes. Sheer happiness. She is just managing to convince herself that she hasn't passed on to a life after death, when everything gets complicated again.
Anna and Ankh are arrested for not having been present at a Trimslop match, then a horsewoman is murdered. The inquiry decides that the dead woman must be Anna.
Then onto the scene comes Holinshed, a very chic horse that works freelance for humans across the epochs of time...
This book is for all those who love Paris, the end of the world, horses, camping, Simone de Beauvoir... and perhaps football just a little less.
La Vestale du calix is a combination of SF and fantasy in one novel. It recounts the voyage through time and space of two women and a very smart horse. The novel is a light-hearted reflexion on the notion of "lost civilisation" and of the way we project our own religious fantasies on to the dust of centuries and the crumbling ruins of the past. Fuelled by a hatred of football, radical feminism and animal studies, the novel plays on the incongruous encounter of civilisations and on the derisory nature of the notion of scientific progress. Humour and scholarship give depth to this narrative both in its fantastical situations and in the hearty vitality of the writing style!
Summing up a fantasy novel from the Nantes publishing house Atalante is a bit like deflowering Hermione in Harry Potter. If the book in question is La Vestale du Calix, by Anne Larue, her first novel in the genre, then there are likely to be even greater crimes committed.
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So there are two ways of reading Vestale. One way is letting oneself be carried along, revisiting one's past (the main characters are female, the secondary are male or animals, but it's possible to keep on track, and projecting oneself into a maybe that is still possible. Revelling in the little discoveries, experiencing the liveliness of a serial-writer, but also the surreptitious pastiche of standardised chick lit. The other way is thinking about the story itself and how it is told. This means of transmission implicit in the thriller framework (not really a whodunit) can be discovered not just on the surface of the narrative, but deep within it.
Anne Larue is a medievalist and also interested in Democritus. It is not by chance that her heroines have been taught, the first one, runes and the second, a kind of palaeontology of our time: our beliefs (not forgetting the cult of the god Auchan), ways and customs. The evocation of a new age that is determined, like some of its predecessors, to be immutable yet productive and inventive, is the central metaphor that Anne Larue, like Homer's Penelope, spins.
Jef Tombeur
Her first novel, recently published by Atalante, is one of those that at first sight can be puzzling. It fires off in every direction and sometimes you might think that it is going nowhere. The kind of book that booksellers absolutely dread: how to sell such a book to the reader? All at the same time SF adventure, crazy fantasy, dystopia, esoteric fable, future fiction (therefore a metaphor about our present), theoretical feminist work and in some way a novel for teenage girls mad about horses.
This is what makes this surprising odyssey so great and makes it essential reading. Well yes, if this is a little UFO, it has to be captured in flight. It reminds us a little of those off the shelf writers like Douglas Adams (whom the author alludes to frequently and with emphasis), Kurt Vonnegut Jr or Robert Sheckley. But in a female version. Sensitive and warlike at the same time. And incredibly funny.
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This isn't about a quest in the proper sense of the term, as one might expect in a classic fantasy narrative. Although there is one. It's not about battles. Although there is a bit of fighting and quite a number of deaths. It's not about international intrigue. Although there are rumours of plots. It's not about forgotten and mysterious countries. Although Paris is not very recognisable. It's not about great glory or victorious heroism. Although (and I'm not giving away a great deal) the heroines win in the end. The most incredible thing is that when you get to the end of the adventure, having been tossed about from one end of time to the other in numerous parallel plots or subplots, up comes the ending which is completely unexpected and almost whimsical (I repeat, I haven't given anything away). At a stroke it resolves all the questions and gives meaning to the whole novel.
Colville, Gouffre au sucre
The first thing to say about Anne Larue is that she knows how to mix references in a particularly impressive way. In fact La Vestale du Calix is a suite of quite impressive references to various science fiction novels, films, and music that have been part of the author's culture. And her novel turns out to be an absolute melting pot of all that we can encounter in terms of science fiction. For many writers this would have turned into an untidy, superficial mishmash yet Anne Larue, completely in control of her subject matter and her literary inclinations, delivers us a particularly stunning and really fascinating novel.
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Difficult to put into a category, Anne Larue's novel appears like a UFO in the sky of French science fiction. Stuffed with ever more fascinating references, endowed with a scenario chock-full of twists and turns, caustic humour and written in a fluid style, La Vestale du Calix is one of those science fiction novels that you either love or hate. But in no way will it leave you cold...
Deuskin, Mythologica
This is the occasion for the author to criticise certain aspects of our society, without having to discuss them at great length, just simply and with a grain of humour. She accomplishes this by means of a choice of situations, or through the theories of Ankh, a medievalist, who thinks the Middle Ages are actually our own era and sees in the supermarket hoardings and the cash points artefacts from a religious cult for which there remain very few archives. We are doubtless familiar with this kind of criticism, but not only is this novel intelligent but it is also quite funny.
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I must talk about Holinshed, without doubt the most original character in the story, and of the underlying feminist thinking (which doesn't prevent you from appreciating the book even if you haven't read Beauvoir...). But that would surely spoil your discovery of this surprisingly original and often funny book that I cannot but recommend to you even if, like me, you are "not very SF".
Marmotte, Rongeuse de livres