Et soudain, The Book of Love, Kelly Link

 Il y a quelques années j'avais lu le recueil de nouvelles La jeune détective, et j'avais été ensorcelée par la voix de Kelly Link. 

Je savais qu'elle avait un roman, sorti, il y a deux, trois ans, mais il m'a fallu tout ce temps pour décider de me le procurer, parce que comme d'habitude, j'ai peur d'être déçue par les bonnes choses. La situation s'est résolue en le trouvant au bookshop que j'aime, dans une petite rue de Montpellier, et soudain il n'était plus possible de partir sans. 

Tout ceci pour dire, voici deux pages qui m'ont fait vrombir de joie. Écoutons sa voix ensemble, si ça vous dit, et admirons la maîtrise de ce portrait de lieu (qui reviendra à plusieurs reprises dans le récit) : 

"What Hast thou Ground?, on the other hand, was by design ambience-free, and yet it did a terrific business in lattes, frappucinos, peanut butter mocha fudge hot chocolates, and plain hot coffee to go. Billy, who owned What Hast Thou Ground?, had explained to Susannah when she first started working there that atmosphere what the enemy of good. Atmosphere meant people wanted to nurse their flat-whites or free coffee refills and hang out forever. Too much atmosphere and you might as well accept that you had declared you were a habitable planet and people should just come and live there and raise families. They got territorial about chairs. Regarded you, the original inhabitants, whith hostility and suspicion. 

The trick was to make the coffee strong enough that people kept coming back but to make sure one or two legs of each table were just a little short, the chairs incomfortable and a little rickety, so no one ever wanted to stay longer than they had to. For this reason, the lock on the unisex bathroom door was untrustworthy and the toilet paper of a poor grade. Whenever anyone asked when the coffee was going to get WiFi, Billy shrugged and said, "we're looking into it. For sure." Susannah thought Billy was one of the smartest people she'd ever met. Plus he never asked the baristas to smile or be cheerful. He felt it would have raised the tone too much. 

On one of Susannah's first days at What Hast Thou Ground ? Some out-of-town asshole had brought her fat-free latte up to the counter three times : first because she said the foam tasted like whole milk and then that Susannah had over-frothed it. The third time, she'd finished off the latte, then came back to the counter to reach into the tip jar and scoop up a handful of coins because, she said : "tips were for good service" and she was going to take hers back.  Billy had watched the whole thing, could apparently see that Susannah was seriously contemplating leaping over the counter and taking this lady down to the ground. "Time to go," he told the lady. "While you still have legs." Then he handed Susannah a bunch of chipped plates from under the sink. "Go back and throw them at the wall next to the dumpster," he said. "Just sweep'em up afterwards." It was the first time anyone had given Susannah permission to destroy anything, and she'd loved Billy ever since. 

The walls of What Hast Thou Ground? were a sticky, nicotine beige. Dead flies lay on their backs like dreamers on the corners of the windows. The ceiling fans worked only intermittently in the summer. Nevertheless, What Hast Thou Ground ? Had a small but devoted sit-in clientele that Billy had never managed to dislodge, no matter how much Air Supply and Lionel Ritchie, how many syrupy Broadway medleys from Cats and Phantom, and Hello, Dolly!, how much late-period Coldplay and early-period Céline Dion he pumped out over the tin-can sound system. 

Kids brought their notebooks, because there were no plugs for laptops, and wrote poetry or Korrasami AU fanfiction or very sad and secret thoughts in their most beautiful penmanship. Young adults met clandestinely in corners so everyone would know who they were thinking about having sex with while the middle-aged came in on their lunch breaks and imagined that they were young again, only this time around with the money for a daily flat-white."

C'est fabuleux, non ? C'est Kelly Link, dans son roman The Book of love.