Okay, so this review will be a bit different from the others (not only because this is a French book). I’ll begin with a few positive points, and then I’ll provide a compilation of things I said to my friends as a representation of my mind slowly descending into madness.
So, with the positive points : I think the main character qualifies as POC, she’s also a feminist and has defined views on social status. The text in itself is alright. It’s probably a satire of Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey and the like, which can be an interesting concept.
But.
(This is going to be long.)
“After 35 pages, I only know 3 things about the main character : she doesn’t want to work, she’s not white and she’s chatting with an important guy from her new company called Duncan Vane”
“A lot of things are making me cringe in the writing, like the fact that she’s judging the way he talks ‘like an old man’ but then she uses old sayings that my grandmother would be embarrassed to say”
“Every time her company chat thing pings, she says ‘Meowing.’ in the narration. Every. Damn. Time.”
“There’s something shady about Vane. Actually, all the guys working on the 6th floor are shady.”
“It feels like a mix between Twilight and Fifty Shades : a Twilight fanfic seasoned with unhealthy relationships but where you kept the surnatural part”
“Vane just made a demand for an apartment in the name of the protagonist and he justifies himself with ‘it just got free, I just wanted to help’ and she’s like ‘oh ok’, no not ok what the hell this is so creepy, he could have, I don’t know... asked in the chat that you’re both using all day”
“By the way, if I’m not telling you her name, it’s because I forgot it and apparently no one wants to remind me”
“It’s so weird, he got her the place where he used to live”
“In her situation, I would resign and go find a job at Walmart”
“He asked her if she wanted an irl relationship and she told him that she didn’t want people to think she had gotten the job with sexual favors, he said that people could say whatever they wanted and she told him that she hoped people wondered with whom he had sex with to have his job. He left the chat, offended”
“Her name is Myriame! Finally someone said it”
“She just tried to imagine what he looks like naked. Well, not naked. She tried to imagine the color of his skin. Everywhere. Well almost everywhere.”
(after an uncomfortable excerpt where Vane tells Myriame that she is living in what used to be his ‘bachelor apartment’ and they both seem to like the idea) “I want to laugh or cry and I can’t do either because I’m not alone”
“She tells him that ‘old fashion’ is cool and out of nowhere he tell her to look on top of a shelf and there is one of his old shirts and he gifts it to her. She’s going to use it right now as a nightgown”
“At this point of the story, I’m already long gone and I have a job at Walmart”
“What’s happening right now is that she has found a supernatural and controlling sugar daddy”
“She took a shower and she’s naked under the shirt and she feels ‘a strange breeze’ girl you’re like 25, is this the first time you’ve put on a shirt before your panties or what?”
“The woman who wrote this is as old as my mother”
“Ghost sugar daddy is using a computer”
“It’s not my fault the chapter begins with ‘oh great Shakespeare, whisper me answers as plump as my buttocks’“
“Try to guess how many pages I’ve read. Hint, it took me 2 hours. [...] 55. It’s so bad that it took me 2 hours to read 55 pages.”
“Duncan ‘oh look a suddenly necessary object conveniently appeared in my old apartment’ Vane”
“She settled her clothing problem on her own. What an independant woman!”
“Oh, she just admitted to herself that something is wrong with Vane”
“She sacrificed the equivalent of her monthly wage to buy a Hermes scarf and tied it around her chest and I have so many questions.
1) Your chest must be so flat, I’m jealous
2) Where did you put your t-shirt and your bra, you don’t have a bag?
3) You wanted to avoid standing out but all the women are going to be in cocktail dresses, isn’t that completely making you stand out?”
“Ok so her personality is badly written. She’s had a rough life but she stayed on her feet, typical strong woman yeah? But now, she’s enduring everything! She has opinions about racism, sexism, social inequalities, but she doesn’t do anything, and when she talks about it, it’s always with the bad timing!”
“The way she talks in her head is so much more similar to the way she talks to Vane than the way she talks to her friends that it gives the impression that her real personality is the one she shows to Vane even if she looks like an idiot half of the time she talks to him”
“In her situation, as they get along well, I would have bought a sofa that can change into a bed and I would have invited my sick mother to come live with me in the great apartment instead of letting her live in her crappy one.”
“I’m almost sure that it’s to avoid having the mother there when they will accidentally make out”
“Right, ‘accidentally’. But yeah, that’s propably the reason, let’s not make it more creepy by putting the sick lady in there”
“And now she’s thinking ‘I need friends, it costs less than therapy’ which is true but also not the same thing at all. You don’t see me going ‘this stale bread costs less than cake’?”
“She’s going to the French Academy’s library to look for urban legends on Paris’ buildings because she thinks it might have a link with Duncan Vane and his possible magic powers.”
“Is this the equivalent of Bella’s stupid internet search about vampires ?”
“Wait, why is it changing into phone sex now?”
“She sees a guy who works on the 6th floor in a bar, drinking... an omelette with a straw from a bucket?
Me thinks it’s not an omelette in his bucket.”
“The cat licks her in the hollow of her thigh, it tickles, she scoops him up and he puts his paws on her boobs. Typical cat behaviour. The only reason that I can possibly see for such insistance on it is that the cat is somehow Duncan Vane”
“Vane is very dead.” (he’s actually a... building spirit called a lemure)
“The ghost sugar daddy has principles, he was seduced by her attentiveness, not her body. Well, not only.”
“What, you’re not happy that she’s metaphorically sitting on his lap?”
“He can control everything in the apartment and she just woke up with a sheet... groping her?”
“Girl, he’s trying to woo you, he won’t eat your mother?”
“He’s made of cat hair and sink gaskets.”
“When he was alive, he liked trigonometry, horses and arab women”
“I think it’s technically a sex scene. I’m pretty sure his fingers are not making toast right now.”
“Please tell me that they’re not going to have sex in his tomb. Ok, no. Eh, I’m almost disappointed now.”
“At least, Vane had a little character development”
“She reminded us with 0 subtlety that she has a secret but we all forgot because no one cares as she is sleeping with a building.”
“He sent another building disguised as cats (yes plural) to protect her”
“I’m calling it, Vane is going to die.”
“Apparently Kite is in love with her now. I don’t know how, I don’t know why. They met once and he assaulted her that time.”
“She’s fighting with Vane because he doesn’t want to transform her, because he knows his life is shitty. And also there are many more chances that she just dies instead of becoming like him.”
“She burned the building. She just killed Vane.”
“She’s justifying it to herself by ‘it was very painful and I love him but well he wasn’t going to love me forever and I was going to be hunted if he ever lifted his protection’ which is stupid for so many reasons”
“Why is she doing this ? Apparently in the last four chapter she became afraid of aging.”
“Kite comes out of nowhere and tells her, ‘if you want to become like me, I can try, my price is just that you become my wife’ and she seems interested. The end.”
“I still don't know why Kite likes her and now the story's over”
“Now try to understand why this is called ‘Hear the night’ because I don’t.”
“At this point, I’m more sorry for Vane than anyone else in this story. Except for her parents, because she’s going to disappear and they’re going to die. Oh, yes, because Vane was supposed to protect them, but he’s dead and the Vatican was supposed to protect them in exchange for his death, but she’s probably going to go with Kite, thus betraying the Vatican because he’s also a spirit. They’re so going to die.”
And then, I was mad about what this could have been (because it could have been alright with... foreshadowing for a start) for days.
ATTERUPGAARDS CASSIDY and Catherine DuFour at the 2019 Swedish International Horse Show scoring a personal best of 80.8% in the Grand Prix and winning the freestyle with a massive score of 89.4%!
"Pour moi, il y a deux Peintures : la concave et la convexe - celle qui sort du cadre pour vous coller au mur et celle qui vous invite à enjamber le cadre pour aller voir comment se continue le paysage au-delà.
Celle qui vous prend la tête en hurlant et celle qui vous prend par la main en chantant à voix de sirène.
Pour moi, il y a Guernica et les prisons du Piranèse".
(Catherine Dufour, 'La lumière des elfes')
Avec Samehine s'éteint une étonnante vitalité, un talent exceptionnel à régenter, une appétence rare à jouir de l'existence avec démesure, goût et générosité.
