Portrait of a dominator – Liberation
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From the first lines of the novel, tension settles in tiny things, like this ant which appears on the knife of Charles Perrière, during a birthday lunch. There is no sudden movement in this apparently peaceful family life, just a shared meal and champagne outlet for the father's 50th anniversary. We play with appearances, silence and secrets that will dominate this powerful book, of inexpressible violence.
Charles Perrière is what is called a large cop, director of IGPN, the police. He chose this ungrateful sector because it is a Cartesian, a man who places order and justice above everything. His wife and children seem to be the same barrel, except the eldest, Alexandra, a raw character, misunderstood and unloved by this father with ideas arrested. We would be tempted to say more, but decipher appearances come to spoil fiction. Appearances, let's talk about it, it is by this word adored by thrillers that we should draw the string. But here, no thrill, rather halftone for a couple affair that walks with the baguette, of children who more or less take the tangent, of entourage who seeks the truth. The experience of a straight man like an I and who, this evening again, will not say anything.
Fabrice Tassel succeeds with infinite delicacy in camping his female characters, mutic heroines so well high, seeming to accept everything and yet capable of ultimate actions. He dose at the nearest gram, the hesitations of one, the weakness of the other, the insurance of the third. But Charles Perrière is his most successful creature. A man plagued by his contradictions who aligns his costumes as he classifies his principles, capable of explaining everything, his cowardice as his obsessions. He « Like the moment when prey gives way » And confuses everything: love and desire, domination, attachment and lie. The novelist describes the mechanisms of the grip in this character incapable of being happy but madly proud, dominating. « I have always set the rules », said Charles for any explanation.
There is not a word higher than the other in this fiction that Georges Simenon would not have denied. Fabrice Tassel plays all the shades of gray and holds the reader in apnea. It is both precise and sensitive, until the last page, which will not forget to be immediately and superbly completes the puzzle of a handful of lives.
