Touch - Zentner Alexi

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Résumé :
On the eve of his mother's funeral, Stephen, a middle-aged priest, sits down to write her eulogy. But as the evening creeps into night, he is haunted by memories from his childhood: birthday trips to the cuts with his father. the moment his sister slipped under the thick winter ice forever. and, the memorable day his grandfather, Jeannot, came home after a thirty-year absence with a bundle of bones in his pocket and a mission to raise the dead. Masterfully weaving the stories from three generations of one family, "Touch" tells the founding tale of Sawgamet - originally a gold-mining village - where deep in the forest reign golden caribou drinking from a honey-sweet river. Yet also in the forest lurk malevolent shapeshifters disguising themselves as friends, storms raging against foolhardy settlers, and the forest taking back the land for itself, branch by branch and root by root. "Touch" is a singular, startling debut as enchanting as it is unnerving. In this darkly sinister fairy tale Alexi Zentner builds a magical world as distinctive as a grown-up Narnia, and marks himself out as a real talent to watch.

Such memorable characters, such a strong sense of atmosphere, such grace, and all of these done with a wonderfully light touch...I was moved by the elegiac telling, the unapologetic tenderness that never became maudlin, and the characters...the narrator for whom my heart broke at the end. I will remember this story for a long time. -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Praise for short story 'Touch', the first chapter of the novel An affecting debut from a major new talent. -- Philipp Meyer author of American Rust In this sweeping family saga, Zentner delves into the heart of myth and memory. Eerie and beautiful, Touch is a love-song to the power - and brevity - of dreams. -- Johanna Skibsrud, Author Of The Sentimentalists Touch is full of a sinister magic straight from the tradition of the Brothers Grimm: the dark, impenetrable forest, the ravenous water-witches, the menace of blizzards, the rivers that swallow people whole and leave them frozen in the ice all winter, straining to link hands. Such savagery, however, only illuminates the deeply human love in the marrow of this novel, which Zentner achieves with incredible grace and greatness of heart. -- Lauren Groff, Author Of The Monsters of Templeton Touch is a stunning and provocative debut. Zentner mines the human heart to blend humour with tragedy, myth with reality, addicting his audience to a world as uplifting as it is brutal. -- Tea Obreht, Author Of The Tiger's Wife