Books. Seven must-see regional novels

The call of the farm

NAISSEUR, by Delphine Laurent, Ed. Albin Michel, 320 p. ; €20.90.

She should not have returned to the country or taken over the family farm. To succeed them, his parents had waited for their son Paul to appear… in vain. After joining the School of Mines, another life awaited him. It was therefore the youngest, Marie-Loup, a young thirty-year-old, who felt the call of the farm. She gave up a career as a lawyer and a life as a couple in Paris to face the harshness of a breeder’s existence and discover the visceral bond that binds her to her cows. Naisseur appeals to the reader with his almost organic approach to daily life on a farm. The writing immerses in the cowshed rivers, the smell of animals and calving that sticks to the skin after a day’s work. The author exposes us to the scratches of cold and humidity, plunges into the winter mud. Even if the action takes place in an imaginary place in Fonsveilles, the novelist was inspired by her experience to write this magnificent first novel. Coming from a peasant family in Aveyron, she took over the small family farm and the breeding of cows with her husband, a veterinarian. Between reality and fiction, Naisseur highlights the soul of a peasant woman today.

Our opinion: PPP