Literary rentrée. Our selection of 6 foreign novels in the whirlwind of love

The most poignant

Missed loves, by Susie Boyt, Ed. The Crossroads, 240 p. ; €22.

“ “It would be nice to see each other sometime. Do you have a free time, Mom?” She was no longer there.” That would be for another time. Another time when Ruth, Eleanor’s mother, would bend over backwards to improvise a Christmas dinner or a birthday in a park or on a public bench. Eleanor, Ruth’s thirty-something daughter, is a drug addict, like her darling and those around her. By instinct, by necessity, by love, Ruth raises Lily, her newborn granddaughter, who will become a beauty, like her mother, fine and sensitive. At her side, Jeane, the best friend, with a strong character, comforts the grandmother-granddaughter duo with her warm shoulder and her delightful repartee. The British Susie Boyt, great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud, offers a work of infinite delicacy on filial and friendly ties, life that flies by, the little nothings that make all the difference and the unsaid things that say everything. This work is a splendor in which we willingly immerse ourselves to try to understand the unspeakable of love, of loss. How can a mother behave when her daughter rejects her? What can a grandmother do to create a filial bond between a very unwell mother and a little ball of babbling energy? The heart-shaped answers emerge in these wonderful pages.

Our opinion: PPP