I recently finished the novel Quand sort la recluse by Fred Vargas. I’ve read seven or eight books by Vargas since a bookseller in Paris recommended one to me in 2013, but this is the first one I’ve experienced as an audio-book. Indeed this is the first full-length audiobook I’ve ever listened to in French (I’ve listened to dozens of audiobooks in English). I listened to it over a period of a month or more, off and on during the half-hour blocks that are my commute to the office. It runs about 12 hours in total, surprisingly little for a 477 page printed book. I don’t think I read French silently at 40 pages an hour, though I haven’t timed myself recently.
I enjoyed the book enormously, but that’s almost certainly a combination of enjoying the content and enjoying the medium. I remember being elated when I first reached the point where I could read a full-length French novel without constant reference to a dictionary. The first several French books I read that way seemed to me marvelous, wonderful tomes of literature simply because I experienced them in French. It wasn’t until I had 10 or 15 under my belt that I was able to start assessing the book independently of the things my brain was doing to read the book in French. I assure you, Sigmund Fred ne répond plus is pretty dreadful, even acknowledging that it’s written by a master and intended as a pastiche. Just awful.
I knew from watching plays or listening to the radio that trick to comprehending an audiobook is accepting that one won’t catch every word or understand every expression. Instead, the goal is to understand enough of what’s being said to have a decent chance of following the next sentence, and the next. With the audiobook, I have an escape hatch of hitting the rewind button and going back to re-listen to the most recent 10 or 30 seconds. But I tried to use that very sparingly with Quand sort la recluse. While it’s true that I didn’t catch every word, I was delighted to find that I caught 90-95% of them.
Even more enjoyable was that I found this didn’t take all my brain power: I was able to think about other things while following along with the recording. One of the things I was able to think about was: “wait, what was that he just said?”. To use a programming analogy, it was like my brain would launch a new execution thread whenever it hit a difficulty. That thread would dwell on the word and try to recall its meaning, or dwell on the sounds and try to resolve them into the correct words, while the main part of my brain program continued on ingesting and understanding the recording as it went. I could maintain this for 15 or 20 seconds before having to shut down the auxiliary thread if it hadn’t reached a conclusion. My success rate at figuring out these puzzles in not-quite real-time was something like two-thirds, and those successes were enormously satisfying. I drove to work with an odd expression on my face, a mix of intense concentration but also repeated reward. I arrived at the office with my brain tired but abuzz, although somewhat mystified about how exactly I had gotten to the office — all the attention on the book left me with scant memories of the drive. I hope I didn’t run any red lights….
As to the book itself, it’s pretty decent. Quand sort la recluse is the ninth book in the series featuring Commissaire Adamsberg, head of a criminal brigade in Paris (Vargas writes other books not in that series). The brigade has a well-established cast of supporting characters whose signature traits make for a sort of Commedia dell’arte feel. We already know and love the lieutenant with the eidetic memory, the hypersomnolent computer specialist who must sleep every three hours, the tall, heavy-set female detective, and the confidant who grew up with Adamsberg in the Pyrénées. There is a bit more tension among this crowd than usual, as the story features an internal plot of division within the brigade as well as an external plot of who is behind a series of murders. Adamsberg does his usual thing of investigating without method, following as the wind blows, and letting “tiny bubbles of gas” float around in his brain (a process he himself hesitates to dignify with the word “thinking”). There’s a French expression for this lack of method, which I learned elsewhere: proceeding «à tatons», i.e. by feel. We would say “flying by the seat of his pants”.
As always, Vargas has done her research on an offbeat topic and has something interesting to share with us. This time it’s a venomous spider named «la recluse», rare in France though common in the US (the brown recluse). Although the spider seldom encounters humans and its bite is not fatal if treated with antibiotics soon enough, multiple octogenarian men living around Nîmes die from the poison within a matter of days despite medical treatment. This attracts the attention of the Adamsberg, though the investigation must be unofficial as insect bites are not typically in the purview of the police. Sure enough, the victims share an unlikely and sordid history, and their deaths turn out to be a revenge scheme executed (pardon the pun) with an unusual and symbolic weapon.
A second meaning of «la recluse» dates from the middle ages and refers to a woman who sequesters herself in a tiny stone enclosure, perhaps a meter squared, entirely sealed except for a small window (une fenestrelle) to allow for food to be passed in. The women who became recluses in this way were almost always unmarried rape victims who were deemed impure, too damaged to be desirable as a wife by any man, and too impure to be accepted at a medieval convent. They semi-voluntarily cut themselves off from society, living in sordid conditions and dependent on the charity of anonymous others to provide food. Most died within a few years of this from malnutrition or lack of exercise, but perversely, towns viewed having a recluse as a sort of totem who brought God’s blessing upon the local community for maintaining the recluse. Towns allegedly took pride in having a recluse, and the enclosures (often pigeonniers) could be found under bridges, up against church walls, or in cemetaries.
But wait, didn’t Commissaire Adamsberg encounter a modern-day recluse living in a pigeonnier many decades ago when he was just a boy?! Why yes, now that you mention it, he did, although it takes many chapters for this memory to surface. Somehow the murders, the victims’ history of being a gang of rapists in their youths, the spider poison as the means of killing, and the medieval practice of semi-forced sequestration of rape victims all come together in a well-constructed (if slightly contrived) mystery plot. There are a suitable number of twists and turns (rebondissements) and enough suspects introduced to keep me guessing until the end who dunnit and how. I would certainly recommend the book, as apparently would others: Quand sort la recluse won the Prix Audiolib 2018.
One final note: when I read a paper book these days I typically underline unfamiliar words or expressions and sometimes (when I have the energy) go back afterwards to compile lists of vocabulary words to study. Listening to this book while driving, I could not do that, and I find the lack of such a list unsettling. Or maybe it’s the lack of a physical volume to place on my shelf now that I’ve finished the book. It’s as if I have nothing to show for having read the novel, which feels hollow somehow. I guess this is a property that all audiobooks share, but I feel it pronouncedly with this, my first French audiobook. I suppose I’ll just have to listen to more of them to get over it.