Unravelling secrets

Valérie Perrin is not a household name on this side of the pond, but in France her novels have garnered multiple awards. In Tata, Perrin’s fourth novel but the second translated to English, a simple but intriguing premise unfolds into a complex, multi-faceted story, one that seemingly incorporates the lessons of not only her three prior novels but also her several produced screenplays.

Scene 1: Paris, an upscale apartment in the autumn of 2010. Agnes, a celebrated film director, is publicly lauded but privately still reeling from her divorce three years ago. The phone rings. On the other end is a provincial police officer from Gueugnon, who regretfully informs her that her aunt, Colette Septembre, was found dead in her home that morning.

But Agnes reacts with confusion, not grief — Aunt Colette died three years ago.

It’s a great set-up for a thriller, although this isn’t one.

It’s quickly confirmed that Colette really did pass away during the night, which raises not only the question of why Agnes’s quiet, unassuming aunt, who ran a shoe-repair shop in the same small town her entire life, would have faked her own death — and the question of the identity of the person buried three years ago.

To aid in this, Colette left her niece a gift: dozens of audio cassettes, over 100 hours’ worth, on which she unburdened herself of every secret detail of her life. As Agnes listens, she hopes to unravel the meaning of her aunt’s two deaths. But over time the focus slowly shifts to trying to understand the meaning — not of Colette’s death, but of her entire life.

Much of the novel is from Colette’s point of view, narrated in first person via these audio diaries. They take the reader from her early childhood in 1950s rural France all the way up to the three years she spent in hiding after pretending to die. There are also some sections written in screenplay form related to the life of Agnes’s mother.

But this is not a story of Agnes passively listening to cassette recordings. In between she follows leads, presses police contacts for information, interviews Colette’s neighbours and scours her own childhood memories for clues.

Life also goes on: there is a new funeral to plan, Agnes has an ex-husband to deal with and a teenage daughter to care for. And whoever Colette was hiding from may be a danger to her family.

In Gueugnon, Agnes also reconnects with childhood friends, ones she’d see during the school holidays at her aunt’s shoe-repair shop. They help with the legwork. Refreshingly, Agnes opens up to them — she’s not a hard-boiled cliché keeping everything to herself.

Despite the harsh, poverty-stricken life Colette and her baby brother Jean endured in the postwar period, Jean eventually became a world-renowned concert pianist and produced a child, Agnes, who was in turn spared from the same hardships. How?

Questions such as these make the book hard to put down — and along the way to getting the answer to one question, new characters and mysteries are introduced.

The story jumps backwards and forwards in time and space, between Gueugnon, Lyon and Paris, spanning almost 90 years. It jumps between circuses with abusive ringmasters to châteaus with oppressive landowners to the terror of the Nazi occupation.

But there is an undercurrent of hope in every story Perrin tells here. While some will mete out cruelty, there are always those who offer love. There are still sad endings. But kindness counts, even when found in fleeting moments.

Tata is a wonderful novel, with a complex, multi-layered plot which comes together expertly to form a beautiful meditation on humanity and the bonds of family. Special credit is also due the translator, Hildegarde Serle, who makes this read more like an English-language novel set in France than a work in translation.

Joel Boyce is a Winnipeg writer and educator.