{"id":10534,"date":"2019-09-06T08:54:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-06T07:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10534"},"modified":"2019-09-11T21:45:49","modified_gmt":"2019-09-11T20:45:49","slug":"pharricide-confingo-by-vincent-de-swarte-translated-by-nick-royle-reviewed-by-richard-clegg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=10534","title":{"rendered":"Pharricide (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle. Reviewed by Richard Clegg"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Pharricide<\/em> (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle.<\/p>\n<p>This short novel is a terrific read. It is always good to find a new author and I must admit this was all new to me.<\/p>\n<p>Vincent de Swarte wrote several books for children and five for adults. \u201cPharricide,\u201d published in 1998, won the Prix Charles Brisset. He died in Paris in 2006 at the age of 42. The book is accompanied with an introduction by Patrick McGrath, a collector of lighthouse fiction as well as a novelist, and has an afterword by another fictional lighthouse keeper, Alison Moore. De Swarte gets a mention in Nicholas Royle\u2019s favourite first novels (see \u201cThe Guardian\u201d online).<\/p>\n<p>The novel falls into the territory of the short novel that Royle has championed as an editor for Salt Press, most notably with Wyl Menmuir and Alison Moore. Here he is the translator. For most of the time he clings close to the French original, only on occasion does he deviate, for example, universalising: \u201cmon moral d\u2019acier et mon physique\u00a0 \u00e0 la Jean Valjean,\u201d becomes, \u201cmy strong constitution and heroic physique.\u201d The cultural reference to Les Mis\u00e9rables is deleted and enables more focused reading.<\/p>\n<p>The translation maintains the clear drive of the original. It is full of the technical processes of taxidermy that is our narrator\u2019s first love: it is an interesting variation on a CSI, the recreation of the life-like from the dead. We have brief accounts of the previous lighthouse owners and their careers. Geoffroy, our narrator, is something of a polymath, witness his description of the clouds:<\/p>\n<p>Since Jacques left we haven\u2019t wasted a minute. The first thing I did was give Lise a refresher course in how to read clouds. She had forgotten. Today, for example, the whitish, fibrous veil of cirrostratus announces bad weather. If the filaments had been longer, there would have been less to worry\u00a0 about.<\/p>\n<p>He is never less than interesting and never prone to clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n<p>It is impossible to describe the plot without spoiling the ending. It has the narrative twists of <em>The Wasp Factory<\/em> and the transgressive force of Michel Tournier. Some of the descriptions are on a level with Miss Havisham\u2019s time-frozen house.<\/p>\n<p>It is a puzzle why it has taken so long to publish in English, as the story includes outstanding descriptions, effective dialogue, and a slippery narrator\u2019s descent from life. On one level it reflects the life of an artist manqu\u00e9. At one point Geoffroy says that his colleagues describe him as an artist. It is also the study of a solitary obsessive, closed off to the world in a self-inflicted, solitary confinement.<\/p>\n<p>Having started with short stories, Confingo is moving into longer fiction in translation, another neglected form in the UK. As a new publisher they are building a reputation for innovation, surprise, and design.<\/p>\n<p>The book is available in French from Abe books, just above the cost of the postage, and was originally published by Calmann-Levy in 1998. Needless to say the Confingo edition, designed by Zoe McLean, is \u2013 like Confingo\u2019s other publications \u2013 a thing of beauty.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Clegg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pharricide (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle. This short novel is a terrific read. It is always good to find a new author and I must admit this was all new to me. Vincent de Swarte wrote several books for children and five for adults. \u201cPharricide,\u201d published in 1998, won the Prix [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283,18],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Pharricide (Confingo) by Vincent De Swarte, translated by Nicholas Royle. 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