our selection of 3 fascinating novels that tell stories of survival

Madelaine before dawn
by Sandrine Collette
Ed. JC Lattès, 252 p. ; €20.90.

A few centuries ago, a few generations, in an indefinite time, the serfs spent days of work in the service of the lord. They break their backs in the fields, rejoice in the young shoots in spring, shiver in winter, sometimes die from starvation, from the cold, from tetanus.

In the hamlet of Montées, a little girl, Madelaine, arrives from who knows where. Rose, the bonesetter, entrusts her to Ambre, who has no children and who will raise the young girl with her twin sister’s boys. Hardworking guys, just like the wildling, armed with certain courage and a hatchet, who could lose them.

Clay like the furrows in the incessant rain, hard like the ice that breaks the shoots and blackens the young flowers, this fabulous and bitter novel by Sandrine Collette, known for her dark rural thrillers, received both the Goncourt prize for high school students and the 2024 Goncourt Prisoner Prize.

Our opinion: PPP