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Jean Portante: Projets pour un naufrage prémédité [Projects for a Premeditated Shipwreck]
This somewhat strange novel focusses on just a few people. We first meet the main one, Laure, as she approaches a hotel. We do not know why she is there nor where it is. We do know that she is very sensitive, as the narrator tells us that she is. She spots and reacts to small signs. In this case she is looking for any movement in the windows of the five-storey hotel before entering. Sometimes, we learn, she is so concerned about these small signs that she shuts herself up in a dark room for hours staying in the dark for fear of seeing her thoughts and consequently her gestures deviate from the route that a previous chance had indicated.
This has not surprisingly had an effect on her life. Those who knew her had found this behaviour difficult to understand and indicated that she was mentally ill. They soon broke off contact with her. For her it was simply an efficient way of protecting herself from the world which ever since her childhood she has seen as hostile. She was an unwanted child so her childhood had not been pleasant.
We learn that she is in fact married to Frédéric. They have been married for ten years but it is not a happy marriage. They do not have children. He simply did not want any. She said that she had nothing against children but, presumably based on her own miserable childhood, only against childhood.
Frédéric seems to have two interests – he frequently attends political meetings and has numerous extramarital affairs.
We see them in car outside a busy station. She is leaving him and heads to the station. He thinks he has persuaded her to leave but, to his surprise, she is more than ready to leave him and sets off to the station without any regrets.
She had had treatment for her mental issues and the doctor had suggested that they might be caused by her insomnia so had prescribed sleeping pills. She had forgotten to bring them with her. Frédéric was well aware of them as she left them conspicuously in the bathroom next to his toothpaste. For both of them they represent not so much a means to help her sleep but a possible means of committing suicide.
In the station she chooses a random town from the announcement board and heads there. This is where we see her approaching the hotel at the beginning of the novel. Frédéric is convinced that she is bluffing and waits in his car, sure hat she will return in a few minutes,. When she does not, he goes into the station to look for her. The station is very busy and, naturally, he does not find her. He returns home when his girlfriend phones to tell him that she is pregnant. She suggests a time and a place where they can meet the next day.
Our focus now turns to the hotel where we first met Laure. The town used to be a booming town but promised development by the government never materialised and, gradually, businesses closed, people moved away and the town became rundown, with empty houses, dilapidated warehouses and shops closed. Only the hotel remains and that has very few clients so much so that the owner has fired all the staff except for one chambermaid who, we will learn, is called Elena. The owner claims that she was the only one kept on as the owner felt sorry for her as she had an abusive father. We never learn the name of the owner though we learn that she has an ample bust, so much so that Laure will refer to her (to herself) as the bust.
The owner is sitting at the reception desk reading her newspaper as she does most of the time. When Laure arrives, she first thinks that Laure is looking for work and is going to tell her that there is no work in the town. Then she suspects that Laure is there to check out the hotel for some travel guide. Indeed, she seems to recognise her from a previous visit. She recalls (incorrectly) that Laure came with her husband and enquires about him. She also considers that Laure may be having an affair and it is possible that the husband and/or the lover may turn up and make a fuss.
Laure checks in and has to climb the stairs as there is no lift. She cannot get her key to open the door and then hears shouting as two women seem to be arguing in the next room. The chambermaid appears and shows her how the key works but comments on the arguing women and tells Laure tales of dead bodies being found in hotel rooms.
Things start to get really complicated. It appears that Elena had been having a fling with Frédéric when he had stopped at the hotel en route back home and she is the girlfriend who phoned earlier. She apparently sees Frédéric as her way out of the hotel. However the time she had suggested to Frédéric for meeting is after the café is closed. Why did she therefore suggest it? And how did she know about it, as she seems stuck in the rundown town where the hotel is?
A whole load more mysteries occur. Eventually, after criticising Victor, Elena’s father, the owner admits that she is or was married to him and is, in fact, Elena’s mother though it is not clear whether her biological mother or stepmother. Elena gives no indication that the owner is anything but a tiresome employer. More mysteries arrive when Laure goes to the neighbouring room and sees a half-naked woman seemingly dead. She is, in fact, very much alive. She apparently has a letter, unopened, in which she states that her husband is threatening suicide before admitting that she has no husband and that the letter is intended for Laure. We know that Frédéric has the sleeping pills and is even thinking of using them. Did he write this letter and, if so, how did he or, indeed, anyone else know that she was at this hotel? More mysteries ensue involving the owner, Victor , Laure and, indeed, Frédéric who finally turns up, allegedly looking not so much for Elena but Laure. How did he know she was there?
We are presented with a host of mysteries, often inexplicable, a cast of characters, all seemingly with various issues and, with the exception of Laure’s arrival at the hotel, all set in confined spaces – the hotel, Frédéric’s car, Frédéric and Laure’s flat, tyhe station and the café. It is certainly a fascinating novel but do not expect any answers.
Publishing history
First published in 1987 by Editions Phi
No English translation