Smog by Jérôme HARLAY

Overhanging the berry of Marseilles, Smog is as intriguing and menacing place. Around his silhouette in the architecture recalling of a failed boat, three family dramas evolve wildly as the world of the children avoids the control of the adults. A polyphonique novel in the gasping suspense, which reveals with acuteness and delicacy the most extreme tensions.

Strange residence as the Smog, a boat planted in vegetation on the height of Marseilles. From the poop in the prow, phantasm is perfect: rooms became cabins, the terrace was transformed into bridge before, up to the soil tipped up as a ship in sea. The garden seem enlivened by invisible streams itself. 

The tragic death of the owners changes suddenly the destiny of this home-boat, which returns by testament to Fergus, a ten-year-old boy. The child is clever, sensitive and afraid. He lives alone with his father, who entrusts it the time of a étéà Mark Labeyrie, the all know man of Smog. Melancholic and mysterious, this one institutes a peculiar relation with the baby, protector as a father, but mysteriously possessive. A participation from which Joël, the stepbrother of Fergus, feels excluded straightaway. The younger one concentrates on him all the love and all the attention. Very quickly, Joël is going to rebel against the authority of Labeyrie, triggering off a true disaster in spite of him...

A strong and violent novel, who reveals with delicacy the anger of the child and the fright of the adult. The polyphonic music given by the writing, as the one that gives rise to the mistral in the halyards of Smog, haunts you for a long time.

Recommended by Johan Yvon