Sophie Devry. “Like any self-respecting intellectual snob, running on a treadmill has always seemed silly to me.”

after Residential situation, where he wrote again a Madame Bovary 1980s-1990s version, or even? Three times the end of the worldwho visited again Robinson Crusoe (“Not under the sun and the coconut trees, because that was too easy, but in the lot”), Sophie Divrey treats serial literature in a way that’s as enjoyable as it is engaging.

As the title suggests, A fantastic love story mixes love story and fantasy story but also detective intrigue. We follow Bastien, a lone labor inspector, and Maa, a science reporter, in turns as they race for the mysterious “sparkling crystal,” a more than precious stone that various parties are trying to monopolize while on the job. devours himself.

Madame Figaro. – Were you inspired by the thriller and soap opera codes as mentioned on the back cover of your book?
Sophie Devry. – I don’t watch that many series. I wanted, in the tradition of a serialized novel, a well-paced and rounded story. These days, we often leave the pleasure of a good story to the cinema, which is very present in the romantic genre. A fantastic love story is meant to be a compelling piece of rich adventure with these two characters that we follow in turn and come together. The detective was a lot of fun to build, but I was more interested in romantic relationships, psychology, the moral struggle against one’s own limits and one’s fears… For me, this book is also a post-covid novel where people touch each other, fall in love, communicate…

Why did you want to change views?
In our society, if a book combines chapters narrated by a man and chapters followed by a woman with a title like: A fantastic love story, we know something is going to happen… I decided to use variable focal lengths to trap the reader and play with their expectations. Then, if Bastien came to me easily, the image of a woman was more difficult to build. Therefore, Bastien says “I” while Maïa is written in the third person. I had more trouble with him. I changed her name twice, her job three times… I kept coming back to the character of Sophie. When the devil came out of the bathroom. To keep my heroine away from me, I decided to make her do two activities opposite to my practice: indoor sports, because, like any self-respecting intellectual snob, running on a treadmill has always seemed silly to me, and the Rubik’s Cube, which was well suited to the scientific world. to the profession of journalist, but as a literary journalist, it seemed to me an impossible hobby… And now I go to the gym twice a week and play Rubik’s to relax. While writing the novel Kub… I became him.

Your hero is a labor inspector, your heroine a science journalist facing economic difficulties… It was important for you to anchor the novel in social issues. ?
This dimension – related to our relationship with society, our relationship with others, our economic status, our relationship with business… – haunts me in book after book. I write novels for today, for today’s readers, I do not create heroes who are uprooted from society. I am concerned with the place it gives us, the place we would like to occupy within it, the limitations it implies… I have talked a lot about unemployment. When the devil came out of the bathroom. Getting fired, looking for a job that interests me and I also like to see and show people at work. When I talk about my heroine’s profession as a journalist, I say how she goes about it, what questions she asks, how she discusses and writes her articles. I wanted to describe all this precisely, especially since this profession is under a lot of pressure.

For me, this book is a post-covid novel where people touch each other, make love, communicate

Sophie Devry

Diving into a lesser-known profession like a labor inspector must also be stimulating…
Besides Nicolas Mathieu’s novel War with animalsLabor inspector characters are few and far between, and it’s actually always interesting not to have to deal with an area that’s been reworked a hundred times. For a detective story, things are richer because the labor inspector is investigating. He sticks his nose where no one will see, he’s very independent, there’s a sheriff and social worker side, I find that a fairly underutilized social function with powerful romantic potential. But after a while, both characters find themselves either fired or fired; I also needed accessible characters to throw them into incredible adventures, and unemployment seemed like a plausible solution.

How did you come up with the idea for the glowing crystal that all the characters fight over?
The novel is like a Neapolitan cake: a fantastic layer, a realistic layer and a love story layer – the main one. The fantasy layer was the most difficult to develop. I wanted a scientific twist, but one that remained believable. The crystal symbolically represents the death drive, the destructive drive. But above all I needed something that would explain why the first crime was inexplicable, and why Bastien returned like a wounded animal to nest in the bottom of a hydraulic compactor… I went to Cern, Geneva, to meet a physicist and , considering in science my weak skills, I decided to limit myself to the materials used in the CMS detector, one of four that observes what is happening in the accelerator. I chose a particular material, beautifully named scintillator crystal, in the form of a gemstone… Just as there are synthetic crystals to make ethical gemstones, there are scintillator crystals, they actually grow in ovens and have extremely interesting seeing and seeing abilities. reflect light This documentary work allowed me to flesh out this side of the plot realistically.

What drives you to write, in general?
I always need an aesthetic and literary challenge. Revisiting the classics Residential Status And Three times the end of the worldconceive a philosophical tale without any human being Curiosity (the only character is a robot), talk about unemployment and uncertainty, but not in a sinister way. When Satan came out of the bathrooms… These challenges form my driving force, but my deepest goal is to invent our world to better understand and perceive it. I want to allow myself to be moved by what surrounds us, but without simply transcribing it like a journalist does. Fiction, this ability to tell a story that doesn’t exist, is also political in nature. Writing about yourself is important, if only from a social point of view, but it’s a bit like a 1-scale map… And then, I like to touch people, the idea that they feel joy, sadness, compassion, just thank you. It is unusual for my sentences.