French writer Daniel Bernard emailed me to let me know about his new novel, Un dernier Charleston, Louise (One last Charleston, Louise), which has just been published in France Switzerland by Editions Lemart. Here is the front and back cover.
And here is something the author sent me about the book:
"The novel begins in 1957 at Idlewild Airport in New-York. Two women meet as they have accompanied someone to the plane going to Europe. Suddenly, they begin to talk to one another. “I’m Louise, says a brunette, the Louise Brooks!” Angela, the other woman answers: “I’m Angela, please to meet you!”
Then begins this imaginary story about the well-known star, Louise Brooks, and diverse characters: Angela, who is a German immigrant, Helmut, a former assistant to Pabst, the director of Pandora’s Box, and perhaps a lover, and a few others.
Through chapters that are written a bit like film scripts, with a lot of dialogues, we go back to 1928, as Louise was in Berlin, for the shooting of her famous one and only masterpiece, Pandora’s Box, by Pabst, to 1937, as Angela meets Leni Riefenstahl in Minister Speer’s office, in the 50’s in Paris, when Henri Langlois calls Louise back to Europe discovering the fallen and forgotten star, and many other situations.
The plot mixes true events and fully delusive moments that attempt to depict Louise’s personality, if she ever would act that way, with a tender and gentle look. Illusion, images, life, sexuality and the German period of the late 20’s, that Louise had just seen in Berlin are the background, and New York.
The novel contains a great quantity of dialogue, concerning a star of the silent movies, which is stunning. You read it as if you were a witness, hidden somewhere in the scenes surrounding the actors of he novel. At times, hints on the story of cinema art, that has changed the world until now, tells you details and/or facts that a few are aware of. In the background, a drama, well described, in a parallel montage effect, which is a justification if not an explanation of the whole plot: there is no witness of this story written by a true connoisseur."
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