The six volumes of Michael McDowell’s saga, edited almost forty years ago, finally appear in French, at a time of a volume every two weeks.
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The American Michael McDowell (1950-1999) was very careful of posterity. He went astray to be a “commercial writer”, a “craftsman” whose style was guided by the search for clarity and precision. His purpose was as humble as ambitious: to provide readers from reading. It is clear that it remains unattached over the years. By testifying its saga in six volumes, Blackwater, originally published in the United States in 1983 and for the first time translated into French: with supernatural, in the right thread of the tradition of Southern Gothic, this is the history of the Rich family caskey, owner of several sawmills in Perdido, Alabama, the author’s native state.
It starts at Easter 1919, while the Blackwater River is flood. Among the survivors of a flooded hotel arises a pretty woman with red hair like the clay earth of PERDIDO. Without fasteners, she finds refuge at the casked, marries one of the sons of the clan, to the chagrin of his future mother-in-law, and replaces the village the former school mistress. Elinor Dammert has strange powers. It grows water oaks at an unusual speed, swimming in swirls and rapids without fear of drowning, prophesy a fatal accident and reappears buried jewelry with a deceased. “I tend to insist the humor, pointed out McDowell, because the horror seems more horrible when he is allowed to speak in an absolutely banal context.” The family saga of Caskey continues until 1969, Tracking half a century of power quarrels, financial and conjugal crises, with for successive backgrounds, the Great Depression, the Second World War and the Struggle for Civil Rights, in which McDowell was actively engaged.
The reading pleasure provided by Blackwater is specific to the novel-sheet. Double title. By its suspense skilfully spared, and by its publication in the form of episodes: a first in the United States. In addition to the Atlantic, each of the six volumes has, indeed, published a month of interval in pocket format (original paperback) and encountered success. Great Admirer of Michael McDowell’s work, Stephen King was inspired by this model for the Green Line (Librio, 1996). As for his wife, Tabitha King, she finished in 2006 the novel only wrote McDowell at the time of his death, Calliope. The voice of the flames (Telemaque, 2009).
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