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Tuesday, December 20, 2016

European & American Crime Fiction: Generalities & Exceptions by Sylvie Granotier

Author, screenwriter and actress Sylvie Granotier loves to weave plots that send shivers up your spine. She was born in Algeria and grew up in Paris and Morocco. She studied literature and theater in Paris, then set off traveling. She wound up in Paris again, an actress, with a job and some recognition. But she is a writer at heart, and started her publishing career translating Grace Paley’s short story collection Enormous Changes at the Last Minute into French. Sixteen novels and many short stories later, Sylvie Granotier is a major crime fiction author in France. She has met with continued success, and is translated into German, Italian, Russian and Greek. The Paris Lawyer is her only novel to be translated into English so far. This legal procedural that doubles as a psychological thriller is full of plot twists that bring us into the heart of French countryside, La Creuse, a place full of nineteenth-century landscapes and dark secrets. Sylvie splits her time between Paris and the Creuse.

Sylvie Granotier: 
European and American Crime Fiction: Generalities and Exceptions

To me, a French writer with sixteen published novels to my name, American mysteries feel rooted in a basic conception of evil. Evil has to be fought and preferably defeated by good. That’s why American novelists can freak us out with serial killers, an evil force that cannot be tamed nor explained. Europe is too old, and toughened by too many harsh experiences, to still believe in those basic moral concepts. Our world is more grey than black and white.

It doesn’t mean we Europeans don’t have ethics—we do, especially in crime novels. If it were not the case, we’d be writing pornography, where the acts are depicted with no point of view. But I think our basic aim, or mine in any case, is to understand the dark side of men and women, before we judge or punish it.

Other than that, the differences are cultural. Every country comes with a way of life, a climate, a social organization you don’t find elsewhere. In Scandinavian novels, for example, the cold, the short number of hours in a day, and the consumption of alcohol make for an immediately exotic and pleasurable atmosphere, since we don’t have to actually endure them.

My advice to travelers is to read crime novels from the country they want to visit. They’re the best guides ever because they deal with the realities of everyday life. And you’ll know where to eat, where to wander. It’s useful.

In literary terms, American novels tend to be technically engineered. We European writers envy and try to copy the American capacity to grab the reader, maintain the suspense, surprise and shock at regular moments, in a very deliberate controlled way. Again, there are exceptions, but it sometimes makes for simplified writing. Short chapters, short sentences, quick dialogue—you feel the fear of losing the reader, god forbid.

I think we’re less afraid to experiment with construction, with style. I know I often play with time, past and present. I did one novel based on a first person narrator working through the mystery plot thanks to mails, blogs, film clips, and articles. Or one where the story is told by the woman killer getting on with her life and her victim going back on their past.

Most American mystery novels I enjoy tell a story from its beginning to its end like a straight arrow and that apparent simplicity is not the easiest thing to accomplish. Believe me, I’ve tried that too.

One thing for sure, I learn as a writer from every good mystery I read. And my personal training, when my writing feels a bit stiff, is to translate a few paragraphs by an American writer I love.

Ultimately, we’re a big tribe.

Get a FREE SHORT STORY from Sylvie Granotier (not available anywhere else): https://lefrenchbook.com/gift-of-granotier

3 comments:

  1. Love this post! I think grey is far more interesting because it is closer to reality. We often think "evil" is so easy to recognize, but history tends to prove that "evil" has a far more subtle genesis. As for fast pace and short chapters, I think Simenon was the master of that. American mysteries today are much longer and more convoluted. Not necessarily a bad thing but not necessarily the earlier style of "I have to finish this book now".

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  2. Very well put, especially about the differences of ethics. I love old US noir books as they seem to me to be much more accesible from a European point of view, the characters are not so one imensional. I sometimes worry that all the new books coming out of the US aimed at younger adults - crime books included - are overly simplified, they read like romance novels with big, tough heroes and 'feisty' 'girls'. There's something kind of backwards looking in them, as if they wish the world was really so clearly black and white.

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  3. "In literary terms, American novels tend to be technically engineered. ... the American capacity to grab the reader, maintain the suspense, surprise and shock at regular moments, in a very deliberate controlled way. ...it sometimes makes for simplified writing. Short chapters, short sentences, quick dialogue—you feel the fear of losing the reader."

    I think this covers certain types of books in the US - they're like popsicles - read quickly and forgotten. They're kind of like comic books for grown-ups. The cozy mysteries are also very formulaic. Both seem to have that "fear of losing the reader". And with millennials so focused on the quick fix, this is probably just the start. Luckily, there are still lots of great books to be read!

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