1959: Le Gabier de Surcouf

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1959 | 1953-1961 Time to learn to live, 2.1 Bibliographies, Youth

Bruxelles, Éditions Brepols (Bruxelles), 138 pages.

This children’s book would have had its place in the Bibliothèque Verte. The story takes place in the Ile de France, which will become Mauritius. We find there the famous corsair, a young gabier, a young philosopher, etc., and a certain Mr. Piston, incarnation of one of Françoise’s ancestors.

Attached to her Breton and maritime roots, the author would have loved this song by Michel Tonnerre in this very beautiful interpretation by Thalie (who knows Françoise and appreciates her). Thank you to this one for allowing me to insert it here, and to Michel’s heirs. (Vincent)

i

1959 : Le sous-marin de l’espace

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1959 | 1953-1961 Time to learn to live, 2.1 Bibliographies, Youth

Paris, Éditions Gautier-Languereau, coll. Nouvelle bibliothèque de Suzette, 123 pages.

This little novel for young people is the fruit of a collaboration with two literary and scientific celebrities of the time: the writer Jean-Charles (La Foire aux cancres, 12 million copies sold) and the scientist Jacques Bergier, an SF author in his spare time.

The result is an honest adventure book, educational in its scientific postulates, where, unusually for Françoise, female characters are almost non-existent, apart from the presence of a 10-year-old girl.

The USSR found the book meritorious enough (a triumph of disinterested people working for the good of humanity and scientific materialism) for the State Educational Publishing House to translate it into 61.

i

1959: Je m’appelle Kristine

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1959 | 1953-1961 Time to learn to live, 2.1 Bibliographies, Fictional biographies

Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, 285 pages. Reissue titled Moi, Kristine, reine de Suède, 1979

The Memoirs of Hadrian , Marguerite Yourcenar’s monumental work published 7 years earlier, can only come to mind when reading Françoise’s novel. And it is not the transparent clues that she left that will invalidate this observation. One could think of a stylistic imitation, when it is necessary to see there what these two great authors shared: a real knowledge of the Greeks and the Latins.

Knowledge that Françoise puts at the service of her purpose which, always, will have been to say: Women ! Be proud to be! It is thanks to this statement that I will have quite naturally, from my childhood readings, been led to consider that an epic hero could just as well be a heroine.

With Kristine from Sweden, Françoise paints a historical figure that lives up to her intentions. Friend and correspondent of the greatest intellectual and scientific figures of her century, linchpin of the Treaty of Westphalia, adventurous and combative, diplomat and peacemaker, Queen Kristine was unquestionably one of the most important figures in Europe of her time. (Vincent)

i

1959: J’irai cracher sur vos tombes

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1959 | 1953-1961 Time to learn to live, 2.1 Bibliographies, Miscellaneous novels

Éditions Seghers, Paris, 220 pages.

In 1946, published by Éditions du Scorpion, a book by Vernon Sullivan bearing this title. Deemed scandalous, it was then the subject of a lawsuit brought by a Cartel for social and moral action, which revealed that its real author was Boris Vian. He will be sentenced to 15 days in prison, quickly pardoned, for insulting morality. A few days before his death, he gave Françoise permission to write a new version of his novel under this title, whose scandalous scent and the taste for American thrillers at the time made it a literary success. (Vincent)

i

1958: Fort des Femmes

by | Updated on 18/10/2024 | Published on 04/05/1958 | 1953-1961 Time to learn to live, 2.1 Bibliographies, Historical novels

Paris, le Livre contemporain.

Of Françoise, Mac Orlan said : “Her style is so colorful that you have to read her books with sunglasses”. What would he have said of Les Bergères de l’Apocalypse prefigured by this book? Because it is indeed about a fight of women, arms in hand: a troop of poor immigrant beggars, prostitutes and thieves who meet in the bottom of the hold of the boat in which they are fleeing poverty to building a better future in the Americas in the early 19th century. And it is not the titles of sarcastic chapters like La joie d’être mère or Le repos du guerrier that will make us doubt the intentions of the author. (Vincent)

i