The Girl from the Chartreuse by Pierre Péju
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Running Away

“Anything can happen now, including the worst. The worst is merely one among a host of possibilities, a hyena lurking among ambient trivia.” The hyena is robust; he is patient; and eventually he prevails. He cares not about age, or virtue, or one’s contribution or role in life. The hyena is omnivorous.

The Girl From the Chartreuse is a highly cinematic exploration of the randomly inevitable (and inevitably random) condition of life. There is no safety in routine nor in hapless activity. A sort of unfounded hope - in one’s efforts, in the next generation, in doing the right thing - may sustain us in normal times. But the unexpected is by definition not normal. It rips away our armour of complacent contentment.

We each have our own way of coping with the hyena’s unexpected inevitability - change of place, immersion in fiction and fantasy, scholarship, personal devotion, ritualistic consumption, or religious ritual. These are all attempts at escape whether we recognise it or not. But there is no escape possible, no insurance available for the breakdown - not the breakdown of death but the breakdown of life for which only death may be the solution.

Experience will eventually show that running away is senseless. For Etienne, Peju’s protagonist, this is a sort of nihilistic epiphany of “a paradoxical nothingness, for there it was, right there in front of him, in all its glory. Hundred per cent nothingness. Uncomplicated nothingness. No history, no fuss. An illusory, undemanding entity.” At that point, no matter what course of action is decided upon, it requires courage to carry it out.

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