Lady

Allons, QUI saurait résister à l' "incipit" qui suit ... ?

« le vent chantait de vieilles chansons, comme il est dit dans le conte, et comme le vent nous chantions aussi, nous chantions : " Bonsoir Lady ! " devant la porte, le soir de Noël, mais Lady ne sortait pas. Pourquoi me demandais-je, pourquoi ? Lady, sortez, nous vous aimons... Moi, je vous aime. »

Peut-être que d'autres résisteront... Moi non. Puisque "Lady" reste – idéalement – l'un de ces moments de lecture des plus inattendus et "émerveilleurs"... Comment se l'expliquer, au fond ? Modestie et gravité du propos, lyrisme discret de l'écriture.

Petite merveille de roman — fort nostalgique et au lyrisme intact — que je suis en train de redécouvrir, 30 ans après sa première lecture... Il récrée – avec délicatesse – tout un monde disparu et annonce le regard rétrospectif que nous trouverons – beaucoup plus cruel – dans "Crowned Heads" ("Fedora") du même TRYON.

"Lady" se situe à mi-chemin entre l'intrigue "sudiste" (à tonalité raciale) de "To kill a mockingbird" ("Ne tirez pas sur l'oiseau moqueur") - ce merveilleux et célèbre roman de Harper LEE - et le climat adolescent "réaliste" du très estimable roman à succès d'Hermann RAUCHER, "Summer of 42" ("Un été 42") : deux ouvrages qui furent magnifiquement adaptés au cinéma par Robert MULLIGAN... réalisateur qui finit par adapter – et avec quel brio, à nouveau ! — en 1972 "The Other" de son ami Thomas TRYON.

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Mais voici — reproduites ici in extenso — deux superbes critiques anglo-saxonnes passionnantes (source : blog "Happy Antopodean", 27 décembre 2008) :

(1°) celle de Matthew DA SILVA [en langue anglaise : avis aux traducteurs !] :

« Thomas Tryon's 1974 "Lady" is a type of murder mystery and coming-of-age story mingled within a morality tale about intolerance, which ends after WWII. Starting with the 8-year-old Woody's meeting with Adelaide Harleigh on a partially frozen lake during the Depression, we see through young eyes a perfect world change into a garden filled with dangers.

There are many serpents, but the most terrible by far is greed. Old Man Harleigh wants an heir by his feckless son Edward, and Old Mrs Strasser wants a comfortable life by her lovely daughter Adelaide. Only the old woman wins but, in the end, neither do, for Lady will puncture the fragile respectability of the Connecticut town's old guard by doing the unthinkable: she will fall in love.

As Germany waxes robust in Europe, Woody discovers how thin is the veneer that Lady has built up around herself over the years. Her affair with the man who now works as her housekeeper is more than scandalous. He is black and, although Woody loves Lady, he will betray her by proxy, even though it wasn't Woody who blew the whistle.

That distinction belongs to Mrs Sprague who, wheedling information from a young handicapped girl, unearths a secret a 1940s New England town cannot stomach. Yet, despite it all, and despite Woody's innocence and subsequent feelings of anger and betrayal, Lady doesn't buckle.

Her early life with Edward was more difficult than this. Forced by her mother to marry the young man who, in turn, was forced into marriage by his father, Lady suffers abuse and insult for years, along with two miscarriages. Finally, recovered with the help of Jesse, a Caribbean medical student working as an orderly in the sanatorium she went to after losing her second baby — and her power of speech — she gets rid of Edward by infection - the war brought a deadly influence to the world.

Lady has a long story, and a sad one. She seems to overcompensate through kindnesses bestowed on Woody and his brothers and sisters. Their own father died and their mother struggles to keep food on the table. Thanksgiving and Christmas are celebrated with Lady. Woody grows up, enlists in the Navy, and goes off to fight the Japanese.

After the war, he returns and, with the help of Miss Berry — now in her nineties — discovers all the details of Lady's story.

Tryon, born in 1929 and initially a movie actor, weaves a strikingly good tale using both mystery, romance (the young boy and the unreachable, ethereal, true-friend Lady), and morality to excellent effect. He uses events in the town to create drama and suspense. He makes a credible plot with substantial characters who are true to form, if not always to life.

The wonderful storm scene, coming at a critical point in the novel - Woody's admission that it was not him who told the town Lady's secret - adds suspense and drama.

Especially in the early parts, the novel is written in the same sort of form as a childrens story, or series of story books. The same characters reliably appear, act out parts in a way that is consistent with their characters, and retire to leave the center of the stage to Woody and Lady.

The form is reassuring. It is also suitable for the nature of the book, the majority of which takes place during Woody's childhood. There is plenty of real art here and I wonder why this extremely talented writer does not have a higher profile. This may have something to do with the fact that Tryon left acting to write.

It's hard to imagine how an actor could become a successful novelist (he died in 1991). But, then again, it's hard to credit the amount of praised allowed Pynchon, also a New Englander, though still alive. »

(Matthew da Silva, 27 December 2008)

(2°) celle de David KESSLER (d'abord en langue anglaise, puis traduite en français par google + Dourvac'h) :

« Excellent review of one of my favourite books. I read "Lady" in my late teens and it moved me deeply, although I felt at the time that there was a lot that I didn't understand. Whilst I was conversant with modern American politics and used to hang out with Americans (I was living in Israel at the time), I was still at the end of the day, a young British reader and not really conversant with the ethos and culture of 1930s America.

I am desperately trying to get hold of a copy to read it again (I lost my old copy), although I suspect it will leave me with that same breathless, melancholy feeling that I experienced the first time. »

(David Kessler, 2 November, 2011)

" Excellent examen d'un de mes livres préférés. J'ai lu "Lady" à la fin de mon adolescence et cela m'a touché profondément, même si je sentais à l'époque qu'il y avait beaucoup de choses que je ne comprenais pas. Alors que j'étais au courant de la politique américaine moderne, avec l'habitude de traîner avec les Américains (je vivais en Israël à l'époque), j'étais encore — en fin de journée — ce jeune lecteur britannique, pas vraiment au courant de la philosophie et de la culture de Amérique des années 1930. Je cherche désespérément à mettre la main sur un exemplaire de "Lady" et le relire (j'ai perdu mon vieil exemplaire), bien que je soupçonne qu'il va me laisser avec ce même souffle, cette mélancolie que j'ai vécu la première fois. "