Christian Dorsan, novelist, blogger and contributor to the reading group 20 minutes Books, I recommend you Manifesting by Simon Liberati, published on August 17, 2022 by Éditions Grasset.
His favorite quote:
My life, since I signed this contract, has been like a trip with no return. I do not know what will happen the next day, my certainty is that this situation will last until Esther’s departure and my death. By now Ester was still waiting for me lying quietly on the bed, a book on her knees. When I entered the room he smiled. He said to me: “I miss you so much my love!”
Why this book?
- Because love carries within it a part of the drift and surge of salvation. This love between an old writer damaged by alcohol and drugs, through the wandering of life, allows a clear and violent vision of the time that passes in front of the innocent youth promised in the future. This book is above all a meditation on the acceptance of the past.
- Because Simon Liberati is a polisher, he wants to know everything in the history of the Rolling Stones at this particular time and gives us all the little stories that show the rock legend. This book is a bible for fans of the band.
- Because there is this uncompromising eye on our time that gives us not without humor Simon Liberati. An eye that is both disillusioned and acid, a look at a change in our society that denies the revolution of the 60s in favor of the comfort of consumption.
- Since this is a battle between Brian Jones and Simon Liberati, the author finds common bridges between old age set in failure and the frailty of the guitarist who died in 1969 in troubling circumstances. The relationship he shares with his beautiful daughter, feeds his writing, gives meaning to his writings, how far he can go in this similarity of two beings tormented by the fear of losing one.
The requirements of 2 minutes
The plot. A drifting old writer who lives in love with his daughter, wrote a screenplay for a television mini-series about the Rolling Stones from 1967 to 1969. Since then, the episodes and life this mysterious group and the writer respond and overlap. .
Characters. The 70-year-old writer and Esther, his 25-year-old daughter-in-law with whom he lives as a love, the Rolling Stones with Brian Jones and a whole tribe surrounding the nascent group, the production and film crew .
Places. France with Paris and a small village in the countryside, London in the 1960s, the road from Paris to Spain in the Rolling Stones, the winding roads of the narrator.
The time. Today, the 1967-69 period of the Rolling Stones, the literary infinity of Simon Liberati.
The author. Simon Liberati is a writer who lives between two worlds: the present world where his talent confronts his addiction to drugs and alcohol, and literature, an eternal world where he draws an inexhaustible which is the origin of the landmarks. A prolific author, she won the Prix Femina in 2017.
This book is read with praise We do not read Simon Liberati, we swallow or reject, there are no nuances in the writing of this genius who perpetuates the legend of cursed poets, a mixture of romanticism and punk. A novel that mixes two generations with talent. A great book by a great author.
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