Paul: A Novel - Hardcover

Lafarge, Daisy

 
9780593538845: Paul: A Novel
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0593538846 ISBN 13: 9780593538845
Verlag: Riverhead Books, 2022

Inhaltsangabe

A New York Times Editor's Choice

"A magnetic, atmospheric, razor-sharp work." —Aysegül Savas, author of Walking on the Ceiling and White on White

An insightful look at a young woman’s search for meaning, independence, and belonging in the face of a consuming relationship

Frances is an English graduate student bruised by a messy breakup. On the spur of the moment, she decides to volunteer at a farm in rural France with the hope that the change of scenery will help clear her head. The farm, curiously named Noa Noa, is owned by Paul, an appealing, enigmatic Frenchman. Frances is charmed by his easygoing ways and by the area itself, both welcome changes from the life she has known. Yet the more time she spends in Paul’s world, the more unmoored she begins to feel. It isn’t long before murmurings about Paul begin to surface and she realizes how ill-equipped she is for the emotional battle of wills that is smoldering around her, one that threatens to silence and engulf her.

In Paul, Daisy Lafarge has written a perceptive exploration of the power dynamics between men and women, told in a fresh and exciting new voice.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Daisy Lafarge was born in England and studied at the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry collection Life Without Air was short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Paul, the winner of a Betty Trask Award, is her debut novel.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

lundi

I'm sitting on a curb in the autoroute service area, waiting for Paul to arrive. The problem is, I have no idea what he looks like. There were a few photos of him and his home, Noa Noa, on the BénéBio website: one of him standing in front of the house, another posing triumphantly at the summit of a mountain. The image quality was poor though; when I tried to enlarge them, his features blurred into pixels.

I check the time on my phone. It's been over an hour since I got off the bus from Paris, half an hour past the time that Paul and I agreed he would pick me up. I scroll back through our messages. He'd always taken one or two days to get back to me, and when he did so it was in fractured English, with an almost giddy use of punctuation. We are excited to you welcome my home, Noa Noa!! I'd told him it was fine if we communicated in French, and mentally shelved any concern about his late responses; anyone who runs a sustainable farm should not have to be glued to their emails.

The heat rising from the asphalt prickles my thighs. I stretch my legs out into the road, drawing them back every now and then as a car speeds past from the drive-through. The drivers and passengers stare straight ahead, clutching their burgers in silence. Maybe it's just the smell of the food, wrapped in papers damp with grease, but every time a car goes past my stomach lurches.


I drag my scuffed, one-wheeled suitcase to McDonald's, the service area's beating heart. The shift in light in the shaded interior feels vaguely spiritual, as if I'm approaching something sacred. I'm briefly plunged back into the moment of entering the archives in Paris each morning, the swift transition from white sun to cool, muted shade, as the unsmiling attendant buzzed me in.

Back outside with a lukewarm Diet Coke, I watch the cars move in and out of the berths, their slow dance at the drive-through. It's almost elegant, rhythmic, each member belonging to some choreography larger than itself. I think of courtly dances, their participants finely dressed and affectedly anonymous with jeweled and feathered masks, threatening a descent into debauchery at any moment. Flirtations whispered between topiaries, incests muffled by the maze's high hedges.

I remember A.B. telling me about his first intensive research project after graduating. He was assisting an Irish historian who specialized in Insular manuscripts, under whose supervision he'd spend upward of eight hours a day hunched over miniature pages with a magnifying glass in hand. When he finally emerged from the archives each evening, he found the manuscript seared across his vision; everything was snared in the interlacing knotwork of its pages.

I look back at the cars, wondering if something similar is happening to me. No courtly dances, no masks, no topiaries. Just cars, I tell myself.


With my attention on the autoroute in the distance, I fail to hear the heavy, metal panting of the rusting station wagon before it pulls up next to me. The car and its driver hit me all at once: I find myself caught in the teeth of a wide, full jaw filling the open window and bouncing the sun's light back to me. It's a mouth too large for the man's face, pushing out the flesh of his deeply tanned cheeks. My eyes are still in his teeth when he addresses me. "Frances? Frances Hawthorne?"

Despite the width of his mouth, he is unsmiling. His voice is deep, and he pronounces my name in a thick accent that turns the last syllable into something like "torn."

"Yes . . . Paul?"

He looks me up and down, brushing dark curls aside as he wipes his brow. He nods and steps out of the car. I realize I'm still sitting on the pavement as he stands over me, and I fall out of his teeth and into his shadow.

Lifting my suitcase into the trunk provokes a laugh from Paul, who addresses me in French. "How long are you planning on staying?"

I shrug and smile. We both know exactly how long I have signed up for: a week of light agricultural labor, in exchange for bed and board. After that, I will travel on to work elsewhere.

"I hate having to come to places like this," he says, glowering at the McDonald's.

"Mmm," I say, echoing his tone as I get into the car. "Me, too."

A cool breeze filters through the open window. I try to relax into my seat and sneak a glimpse at Paul: he appears louche and at ease, his skin dark and thick with hairs, well worn by sun and activity. I think of the texture of some hardy and durable piece of equipment, a burlap knapsack, perhaps. The car is not exactly dirty, but it is cluttered with use: there is a layer of soil on the floor and surfaces, banana skins and apple cores on the dashboard. One of the cores is not yet brown, maybe just put down by Paul before meeting me. As if able to follow my train of thought, he reaches out and grabs it, putting it in his mouth, core, stalk, pips, and all. He looks over at me as tiny flecks of saliva and apple spray into the air. "There is too much waste in the world," he says. "I eat everything."

We begin to speak, keeping the conversation light, the talk small. Paul speaks with an urgency that seems faintly aggressive; it takes me a couple of minutes of swimming upstream against his diction before I relax into its current.

I've always found listening easier than speaking. When A.B. and I were with his colleagues in Paris, he would talk to them and I would listen, comprehending here and there. He was often told he had a "firm grasp" on the language, and always took this as a compliment. It made me think about the phrasing. Why "firm"? Why did understanding have to come with so much grasping and force?

I tell Paul I'm relieved he turned up, happy I wasn't waiting at the wrong service area. It comes out a little more effusively than I'd intended, but he doesn't seem to notice. He half apologizes for his lateness before doubling back on himself with an excuse: he had errands to do on the way, something about a jazz festival.

"And you've come from Paris?" he asks.

"Yes."

"On your holidays?"

"No." I pause, wondering how much to say. "I was working. In the archives. As a research assistant."

"Oh. So you're an academic?" he says knowingly.

"No—I've only just finished my degree. But my supervisor has this research project, and he asked me to—"

"In what subject?" he cuts across me.

"Medieval history."

"Ah." He smiles as if some realization has dawned.

"What?"

"I studied anthropology. It's my job to try to figure people out."

I laugh, feeling scrutinized and unsure how to respond. I shift in my seat. The seat belt is too tight and begins to rub the skin on my shoulder. I notice Paul is not wearing his.

"So," he goes on. "You're English, a medieval historian, you were a research assistant in Paris, and then—you decided to come and work on an organic farm."

I shrug. It occurs to me how much his description sounds like an obituary.

"And what was it, out of all the hundreds of farms on BénéBio, that made you choose mine?"

"I . . ."

"Is it because of the handsome host in the photos?" He grins, eyes glinting in the sun.

I blink. He is still waiting for a reply. Why did I choose him? It was A.B. who'd sent me a link to the website; I think he'd refused to see me again by that point. I remember making several trips to our temporary office, but he'd had the locks changed. He'd sent me the link to BénéBio's website in a short, terse email, saying that a friend of his who was recovering from a breakdown had done the program last summer and had found herding goats in the Cévennes a "restorative experience."

As for Noa Noa, I remember clicking...

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Verlag
Riverhead Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2022
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593538846
ISBN 13 
9780593538845
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
304
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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