It had been weeks since I saw him on the dashboard every time I climbed the stairs of the Alberto Navarro Library in Elda. The Dalmatian on the cover of the novel looked at me without seduction. And so for quite some time, until a few weeks ago, I beat it by taking it home and reading it. Then I felt sorry for the Dalmatian. Very sad; but not as much as the dachshund in the first chapter. I hate others more” (p.35). (And of course, my dachshund half Gilda didn’t tell her about her novelist siblings, even though she was always sprawled on the couch while I was reading.)
The Great Serpent (Salamander, 2022) by Pierre Lemaître is a noir genre novel in which almost all the elements of its genre are built according to the highest power. Without a detective is a work in which the Paris police are not at their best, with certain racist (p.342), sexist and homophobic touches (p.244).
Mathilde is a 63-year-old woman, at that age (p.277), chubby, smug, married daughter, a doctor’s widow, a resistance hero and always by her side with her dog, Ludo, a one-year-old Dalmatian. He loves dogs but hates children (p.22). He is a hired assassin for a powerful organization for over three decades who seems to hate everyone but his boss, Henri. In his performance, he expresses everything in the second person, in constant dialogue with himself. With this narrative voice, sometimes with sarcasm, sometimes with almost loving or poetic thoughts, he always separates what he wants to do from what he does, showing his whole reality, past and present. Now, this mental activity contrasts greatly with his very thoughtful and not too hectic performances, which can be compared to those shown in other Lemaître novels or certain scenes from Tarantino’s films shot some time later, since, as the author himself states in the preface, this work was his first novel and in 1987’s it was his first novel. He also wrote it, but it wasn’t published in France until 2021.
Through a linear structure that is limited to episodes that correspond to what happens every day and to two specific moments of the same year, May and September, we witness Mathilde’s disgrace due to minor mistakes she made in her performances. . This starts a two-way chase between himself and his boss, Henri, where only one can remain. Technically, it stands out with a configuration of an omnipotent narrator who communicates his opinion, values, and judgments, with a fully updated narrative using the present tense, and a highly cinematographic vision as he pushes a constant beat and is always on the rise. , without truce, I can say it to the end, for Lemaître never takes pity on the reader, always with perfect consistency, without deviating from the only plot that structures it, and without adding a bit of naturalism to Mathilde’s behavior. Of course, without losing the opportunity to criticize the French social system without any argumentative rhetoric, as in the case of the ill-treatment of women (“nothing is done about it but statistics” p.293); and immigration, with that ironic touch that always permeates the novel (“recognizable apartment blocks”) […] with an immigrant population density that allows other neighborhoods not to feel occupied. In short, the most normal corner of France, go», p.105).
And why should you read this novel? For it is pure narrative power where it is the reader’s delight to tell without anything trivial; because it delights in evil as a narrative element, and that, if done well as in this case, is well received by the right reader and is a guarantee of success, even if the killing skill is brutal. Of course, not a word to Gilda.