Archives de Catégorie: En VO

Under the Dome – Stephen King

23 mercredi Oct 2013

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Stephen King - Under the DomeLes premières phrases

«  From two thousand feet, where Claudette Sanders was taking a flying lesson, the town of Chester’s Mill gleamed in the morning light like something freshly made and just set down. Cars trundled along Main Street, flashing up winks of sun. The steeple of the Congo Church looked sharp enough to pierce the unblemished sky. The sun raced along the surface of Prestile Stream as the Seneca V overflew it, both plane and water cutting the town on the same diagonal course. 

« Chuck, I think I see two boys beside the Peace Bridge! Fishing! » Her very delight made her laugh. The flying lessons were courtesy of her husband, who was the town’s First Selectman. Although of the opinion that if God had wanted man to fly, He would have given him wings, Andy was an extremely coaxable man, and eventually Claudette had gotten her way. She had enjoyed the experience from the first. But this wasn’t mere enjoyment; it was exhiliration. Today was the first time she had really understood what made flying great. What made it cool. »

Circonstances de lecture

J’avais très envie de me replonger dans un Stephen King.

Impressions

« Under the Dome » est un de ces livres de plus de 1 000 pages qu’on lit à toute vitesse. Stephen King aime délayer son histoire. Ici, il scrute toute une flopée d’habitants d’une petite ville du Maine emprisonnée subitement sous un dôme transparent. Le départ de l’intrigue est bien posé : on découvre petit à petit tous les personnages (très nombreux !) de ce gros roman. Et on s’y attache.

Reste que les « méchants » de l’histoire sont vraiment trop caricaturaux. Ils semblent avoir tous les vices… Dommage car sinon « Under the Dome » est vraiment prenant. Surtout, Stephen King montre à quel point la part d’ombre des hommes peut très rapidement prendre le dessus dans des situations inhabituelles.  De quoi faire froid dans le dos ! De ce côté-là, Stephen King parvient à nous plonger dans une ambiance de plus en plus noire, glauque et violente, et à tenir en haleine jusqu’aux dernières pages. Même si l’origine du dôme manque d’originalité, ce n’est peut-être pas l’objectif premier de l’auteur. En revanche, s’il a voulu démontrer à quel point la nature humaine peut vite sombrer dans la cruauté, l’égoïsme exacerbée et la bêtise, alors oui « Under the Dome » est une réussite.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 Later on – much too late to do any good – Julia Shumway would piece together most of how the Food City riot started, although she never got a chance to print it. Even if she had, she would have done so as a pure news story : the five Ws and the H. If asked to write about the emotional heart of the event, she would have been lost. How to explain that people she’d known all her life – people she respected, people she loved – had turned into a mob? She told herself « I could’ve gotten a better handle on it if I’d been there from the very beginning and seen how it started », but that was pure rationalization, a refusal to face the orderless, reasonless beast that can arise when frightened people are provoked. She had seen such beasts on the TV news, usually in foreign countries. She never expected to see one in her own town.

And there was no need for it. This was what she kept coming back to. The town had been cut off for only seventy hours, and it was stuffed with provisions of almost every kind; only propane gas was in mysteriously short supply.

Later she would say, « It was the moment when this town finally realized what was happening ». There was probably truth in the idea, but it didn’t satisfy her. All she could say with complete certainty (and she said it only to herself) was that she watched her town lose its mind, and afterward she would never be the same person.

Under the Dome – Stephen King – 2009 (Gallery Books)

The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith

10 samedi Août 2013

Posted by in En VO, Policiers / Thrillers

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Robert Galbraith - The Cuckoo's CallingLes premières phrases

«  The buzz in the street was like the humming of flies. Photographers stood massed behind barriers patrolled by police, their long-snouted cameras poised, their breath rising like steam. Snow fell steadily on to hats and shoulders; gloved fingers wiped lenses clear. From time to time there came outbreaks of desultory clicking, as the watchers filled the waiting time by snapping the white canvas tent in the middle of the road, the entrance to the tall red-brick apartment block behind it, and the balcony on the top floor from which the body had fallen.

Behind the tightly packed paparazzi stood white vans with enormous satellite dishes on the roofs, and journalists talking, some in foreign languages, while soundmen in headphones hovered. Between recordings, the reporters stamped their feet and warmed their hands on hot beakers of coffee from the teeming café a few streets away. To fill the time, the woolly-hatted cameramen filmed the backs of the photographers, the balcony, the tent concealing the body, then repositionned themselves for wide shots that encompassed the chaos that had exploded inside the sedate and snowy Mayfair street, with its lines of glossy black doors framed by white stone porticos and flanked by topiary shrubs. The entrance to number 18 was bounded with tape. Police officials, some of them white-clothed forensic experts, could be glimpsed in the hallway beyond. « 

Circonstances de lecture

Parce que sous le pseudo de Robert Galbraith se cache J.K. Rowling…

Impressions

Ici, rien à voir avec Harry Potter ou The Casual Vacancy… A part ce style, cette écriture propre à J.K. Rowling et que j’adore !

J.K. Rowling s’essaie au roman policier et réussit à nous tenir en haleine jusqu’aux toutes dernières pages. Son héros, un détective privé ancien soldat en Afghanistan, est attachant. Tout comme sa toute nouvelle secrétaire. Un duo que j’espère pouvoir retrouver dans d’autres aventures.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 There’s a client here for you. Shall I show him in? »

« There’s a what? »

« A client, Mr Strike. »

He looked for several seconds, trying to process the information.

« Right, OK – no, give me a couple of minutes, please, Sandra, and then show him in. »

She withdrew without comment.

Strike wasted barely a second on asking himself why he had called her Sandra, before leaping to his feet and setting about looking and smelling less like a man who had slept in his clothes. Diving under his desk into his kitbag, he seized a tube of toothpaste, and squeezed three inches into his open mouth; then he noticed that his tie was soaked in water from the sink, and that his shirt front was spattered with flecks of blood, so he ripped both off, buttons pinging off the walls and filing cabinet, dragged a clean though heavily creased shirt out of the kitbag instead and pulled it on, thick fingers fumbling. After stuffing the kitbag out of sight behind his empty filing cabinet, he hastily reseated himself and checked the inner corners of his eyes for debris, all the while pondering whether his so-called client was the real thing, and whether he would be prepared to pay actual money for detective services. Strike had come to realise, over the course of an eighteen-month spiral into financial ruin, that neither of these things could be taken for granted. He was still chasing two clients for full payment of their bills; a third had refused to disburse a penny, because Strike’s findings had not been to his taste, and given that he was sliding ever deeper into debt, and that a rent review of the area was threatening his tenancy of the central London office that he had been so pleased to secure, Strike was in no position to involve a lawyer. Rougher, cruder methods of debt collection had become a staple of his recent fantaisies; it would have given him much pleasure to watch the smuggest of his defaulters cowering in the shadow of a baseball bat.

The door opened again; Strike hastily removed his index finger from his nostril and sat up straight, trying to look bright and alert in his chair.

« Mr Strike, this is Mr Bristow. »

The prospective client followed Robin into the room. The immediate impression was favourable.

The Cuckoo’s Calling – Robert Galbraith – 2013 (sphere)

Deadlocked – Charlaine Harris

18 samedi Mai 2013

Posted by in En VO, Fantasy, Romans étrangers

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Charlaine Harris - Deadlocked«  It was hot as the six shades of Hell even this late in the evening, and I’d had a busy day at work. The last thing I wanted to do was to sit in a crowded bar to watch my cousin get naked. But it was Ladies Only night at Hooligans, we’d planned this excursion for days, and the bar was full of hooting and hollering women determined to have a good time.

My very pregnant friend Tara sat to my right, and Holly, who worked at Sam Merlotte’s bar like me and Kennedy Keyes, sat on my left. Kennedy and Michele, my brother’s girlfriend sat on the other side of the table.

« The Sook-ee », Kennedy called, and grinned at me. Kennedy had been first runner-up to Miss Louisiana a few years ago, and despite her stint in prison she’d retained her spectacular looks and grooming, including teeth that could blind an oncoming bus.

« I’m glad you decided to come, Kennedy », I said. « Danny doesn’t mind? » She’d been waffling the very afternoon before. I’d been sure she’d stay at home.

« Hey, I want to see some cute guys, don’t you? » Kennedy said.

I glanced around at the other women. « Unless I missed a page, we all get to see guys naked, on a regular basis, » I said. Though I hadn’t been trying to be funny, my friends shrieked with laughter. They were just that giddy.

I’d only spoken the truth: I’d been dating Eric Northman for a while; Kennedy and Danny Prideaux had gotten pretty intense; Michele and Jason were practically living together; Tara was married and pregnant, for gosh sakes; and Holly was engaged with Hoyt Fortenberry, who barely stopped in at his own appartment any longer. »

Circonstances de lecture

J’ai déjà lu les 11 premiers tomes de cette saga. Alors, pourquoi ne pas continuer ?

Impressions

La saga de Charlaine Harris constitue une pause bienvenue dans mes lectures. J’ai dévoré le 12ème tome (en anglais bien sûr) en quelques jours. C’est toujours avec plaisir que je retourne dans la petite ville de Bon Temps où Sookie côtoie  vampires, loups-garous, fées… et humains. Beaucoup de suspens et d’humour font de cette lecture une sorte de petit plaisir coupable. Difficile de reposer le livre une fois commencé tant on a envie d’en connaître la fin.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 The cluviel door was a rare and ancient fairy love gift. I guess it was the fae equivalent of a Fabergé Easter egg, but magical. My grandfather – not my human one, but my half-human, half-fairy grandfather, Fintan, Dermot’s twin – had given it to my grandmother Adele, who had hidden it away. She had never told me she had it, and I had only just discovered it during the attic clean-out. It had taken me longer to identify it and to learn more about its properties. Only the part-demon lawyer Desmond Cataliades knew I had it… though perharps my friend Amelia suspected, since I’d asked her to teach me about what it could do.

Up until now, I’d hidden it just like my grandmother had. You can’t go through life carrying a gun in your hand just in case someone wants to attack you, right? Though the cluviel dor was a love gift, not a weapon, its use might have results just as dramatic. Possession of the cluviel dor granted the possessor a wish. That wish had to be a personal one, to benefit the possessor or someone the possessor loved. But there were some awful scenarios I’d imagined: What if I wished an oncoming car wouldn’t hit me, and instead it hit another car killing a whole family? What if I wished that my gran were alive again, and instead of my living grandmother, her corpse appeared?

So I understood why Gran had hidden it away from casual discovery. I understood that it had frightened her with its potential, and maybe she hadn’t believed that a Christian should use magic to change her own history.

On the other hand, the cluviel dor could have saved Gran’s life if she’d had it at the moment she was attacked; but it had been in a secret drawer in an old desk up in the attic, and she had died. It was like paying for a Life Alert and then leaving it up in the kitchen cabinet out of reach. No one could take it, and it couldn’t be used for ill; but then again, it couldn’t be used for good, either.

If making one’s whish might lead to catastrophic results, it was almost as perilous to simply possess the cluviel dor. If anyone – any supernatural – learned I had this amazing object, I would be in even more danger than my normal allotment.

Deadlocked – Charlaine Harris – 2012 (Ace)

 

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson

27 samedi Oct 2012

Posted by in En VO, Romans étrangers

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«  Major Pettigrew was still upset about the phone call from his brother’s wife and so he answered the doorbell without thinking. On the damp bricks of the path stood Mrs Ali from the village shop. She gave only the faintest of starts, the merest arch of an eyebrow. A quick rush of embarrassment flooded to the Major’s cheeks and he smoothed helplessly at the lap of his crimson, clematis-covered housecoat with hands that felt like spades.

« Ah, » he said.

« Major? »

« Mrs Ali? » There was a pause that seemed to expand slowly, like the universe, which, he had just read, was pushing itself apart as it aged. « Semescence », they had called it in the Sunday paper.

« I came for the newspaper money. The paper boy is sick, » said Mrs Ali, drawing up her short frame to its greatest height and assuming a brisk tone, so different from the low, accented roundness of her voice when they discussed the texture and perfume of the teas she blended specially for him.

« Of course, I’m awfully sorry. » He had forgotten to put the week’s money in an envelope under the outside doormat. He started fumbling for the pockets of his trousers, which were somewhere under the clematis. He felt his eyes watering. His pockets were inaccessible unless he hoisted the hem of the housecoat. « I’m sorry, » he repeated.

« Oh, not to worry, » she said, backing away. « You can drop it in a the shop later – sometime more convenient. » She was already turning away when he was seized with an urgent need to explain. 

« My brother died, » he said. She turned back. « My brother died, », he repeated. « I got the call this morning. I didn’t have time. »

Circonstances de lecture

Lu juste après le dernier J.K. Rowling, pour rester dans l’atmosphère des petits villages anglais.

Impressions

Un livre résolument optimiste et qui fait du bien au moral. Veuf depuis six ans, le Major Ernest Pettigrew vient d’apprendre la mort de son frère. Ce décès va bouleverser sa vie tranquille de quasi-septuagénaire à Edgecombe St Mary, puisqu’il va apprendre à véritablement connaître Mrs Ali, une Pakistanaise tenant le magasin du village. Mais les préjugés raciaux et sociaux font rage dans ce petit village anglais, et son fils Roger voit d’un mauvais œil la relation se nouant entre son père et cette Mrs Ali. Le Major Pettigrew va devoir choisir entre une nouvelle vie amoureuse et le respect des convenances. Avec ses petites remarques acides et son sens de l’humour très british, on se prend vite d’affectation pour ce vieil homme qui n’hésite pas à dire ce qu’il pense et à se remettre en cause.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 He acknowledged a notion that he might wish to see Mrs Ali again outside of the shop, and wondered whether this might be proof that he was not as ossified as his sixty-eight years, and the limited opportunities of village life, might suggest.

Bolstered by the tought, he felt he was up to the task of phoning his son, Roger, in London. He wiped his fingertips on a soft yellow rag and peered with concentration at the innumerable chrome buttons and LED displays of the cordless phone, a present from Roger. Its speed dial and voice activation capabilities were, Roger said, useful for the elderly. Major Pettigrew disagreed on both its ease of use and the designation of himself as old. It was frustratingly common that children were no sooner gone from the nest and established in their own homes, in Roger’s case a gleaming black-and-brass-decorated penthouse in a high-rise that blighted the Thames near Putney, than they began to infantilise their own parents and wish them dead, or at least in assisted living.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand – Helen Simonson – 2010 (Bloomsbury)

The Casual Vacancy – J.K.Rowling

16 mardi Oct 2012

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«  Barry Fairbrother did not want to go out to dinner. He had endured a thumping headache for most of the weekend and was struggling to make a deadline for the local newspaper.

However, his wife had been a little stiff and uncommunicative over lunch, and Barry deduced that his anniversary card had not mitigated the crime of shutting himself away in the study all morning. It did not help that he had been writing about Krystal, whom Mary disliked, although she pretended otherwise.

« Mary, I want to take you out to dinner », he had lied, to break the frost. « Nineteen years, kids! Nineteen years, and your mother’s never looked lovelier. »

Mary had softened and smiled, so Barry had telephoned the golf club, because it was nearby and they were sure of getting a table. He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.

Barry and Mary’s four children were past the age of needing a babysitter. They were watching television when he said goodbye to them for the last time, and only Declan, the youngest, turned to look at him, and raised his hand in farewell. »

Circonstances de lecture

Lu dès sa parution. In English of course !

Impressions

Acheté les yeux fermés, parce que je suis accro à l’écriture de J.K.Rowling. Avec ce roman (gros de quelque 500 pages), J.K.Rowling tourne radicalement la page Harry Potter avec une histoire ancrée de plain-pied dans la réalité. L’histoire a lieu dans un petit village anglais à l’apparence harmonieuse… jusqu’à ce que Barry Fairbrother meure subitement et laisse un siège vacant au conseil municipal. Débute alors une lutte pour savoir qui prendra sa place. Car l’enjeu est de taille, notamment entre ceux souhaitant continuer son combat pour aider le quartier où se trouvent les logements sociaux, et ceux désirant au contraire s’en débarrasser.

Lutte des classes, problèmes de couples, tourments de l’adolescence, drogue, violence, fossé social, préjugés, égoïsme et indifférence… J.K.Rowling délaisse ici la magie pour traiter de sujets durs et forts. Jusqu’à un final dont on ressort secoué. Un bon gros roman sur la nature humaine.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 Fats was curiously joyless these days, even though he made everybody else laugh as much as ever. His quest to rid himself of restrictive morality was an attempt to regain something he was sure had been stifled in him, something that he had lost as he had left childhood. What Fats wanted to recover was a kind of innocence, and the route he had chosen back to it was through all the things that were supposed to be bad for you, but which, paradoxically, seemed to Fats to be the one true way to authenticity; to a kind of purity. It was curious how often everything was back to front, the inverse of what they told you; Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptized backwards into ignorance and simplicity.

And so he decided to break one of the few school rules he had not yet contravened, and walked away, into the Fields.

The Casual Vacancy – J.K.Rowling – 2012 (Little Brown)

Winter Journal – Paul Auster

20 jeudi Sep 2012

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«  You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.

Your bare feet on the cold floor as you climb out of bed and walk to the window. You are six years old. Outside, snow is falling, and the branches of the trees in the backyard are turning white.

Speak now before it is too late, and then hope to go on speaking until there is nothing more to be said. Time is running out, after all. Perhaps it is just as well to put aside your stories for now and try to examine what it has felt like to live inside this body from the first day you can remember being alive until this one. A catalogue of sensory data. What one might call a phenomenology of breathing. »

Circonstances de lecture

Paul Auster, encore et toujours. Un de mes auteurs préférés. J’achète ses livres les yeux fermés.

Impressions

A 64 ans, Paul Auster laisse de côté la fiction pour revenir sur sa vie et écrire ce « Winter Journal », avec un objectif : se poser et essayer de comprendre concrètement ce que signifie l’expression « être en vie », ce que signifie vivre dans ce corps qui est le sien. Passant d’un paragraphe à un autre d’une époque de sa vie à une autre, Paul Auster revient sur des événements marquants, des sensations, des rencontres, les différents lieux où il a habité, les décès qu’il a dû surmonter, en utilisant la deuxième personne du singulier. Un très très beau roman qui se lit d’une traite. Vivement sa sortie française pour une autre relecture !

Un passage parmi d’autres

 The inventory of your scars, in particular the ones on your face, which are visible to you each morning when you look into the bathroom mirror to shave or comb your hair. You seldom think about them, but whenever you do, you understand that they are marks of life, that the assorted jagged lines etched into the skin of your face are letters from the secret alphabet that tells the story of who you are, for each scar is the trace of a healed wound, and each wound was caused by an unexpected collision with the world – that is to say, an accident, or something that need not have happened, since by definition an accident is something that need not happen. Contingent facts as opposed to necessary facts, and the realization as you look into the mirror this morning that all life is contingent, except for the one necessary fact that sooner or later it will come to an end.

(…)

In order to do what you do, you need to walk. Walking is what brings the words to you, what allows you to hear the rhythms of the words as you write them in your head. One foot forward, and then the other foot forward, the double drumbeat of your heart. Two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two feet. This, and then that. That, and then this. Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin. You sit at your desk in order to write down the words, but in your head you are still walking, and what you hear is the rhythm of your heart, the beating of your heart. Mandelstam : « I wonder how many pairs of sandals Dante wore out while working on the Commedia. » Writing as a lesser form of dance.

Winter Journal – Paul Auster – 2012 (Editions Henry Holt and Company)

The House at Tyneford – Natasha Solomons

10 vendredi Août 2012

Posted by in En VO, Romans étrangers

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«  When I close my eyes I see Tyneford House. In the darkness as I lay down to sleep, I see the Purbeck stone frontage in the glow of late afternoon. The sunlight glints off the upper windows, and the air is heavy with the scents of magnolia and salt. Ivy clings to the porch archway, and a magpie pecks at the lichen coating a limestone roof tile. Smoke seeps from one of the great chimneystacks, and the leaves on the unfelled lime avenue are May green and cast mottled patterns on the driveway. There are no weeds yet tearing through the lavender and thyme borders, and the lawn is velvet cropped and rolled in verdant stripes. No bullet holes pockmark the ancient garden wall and the drawing room windows are thrown open, the glass not shattered by shellfire. I see the house as it was then, on that first afternoon. « 

Circonstances de lecture

Fan de la série TV « Downton Abbey », je n’ai pas pu résister à l’envie de lire ce livre. On y retrouve la même ambiance que la série.

Impressions

Tout commence en 1938 lorsque l’imminence de la guerre pousse la jeune Elise Landau à quitter l’Autriche pour l’Angleterre. Elle laisse derrière elle ses parents, en attente de visas pour quitter à leur tour le pays, tandis que sa sœur aînée part pour les USA. Loin de son foyer natal, elle devient servante à Tyneford, au service de la famille Rivers. Là, elle découvre un mode de vie typiquement british, et tombe amoureuse du fils de la maison, et de la campagne anglaise.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 My hair was sticky with sweat and clung to my face and I decided that I would wash, despite the cold. An old-fashioned water pump with an iron handle stood in the middle of the yard. I’d watched the stable boy use it earlier before scrubbing Mr. Bobbin, and I mimicked his movement, pushing the handle up and down until a steady stream of water sluiced my feet and gushed over the cobbles. Kneeling, I shoved my head under the flow, trying to pump at the same time, and managed to rinse my hair as well as spray myself with freezing water. The cold took my breath away, emptying my mind of all thought save for the sensation of icy liquid down my neck. It was not unpleasant, and the rush of water crowded out my tumbling worries. The pump squealed and whined, filling the empty yard with the sound, so that it took me a moment to realise someone was speaking to me.

« Hullo? »

I scrambled to my feet, banging my head against the pump. A pain exploded above my eye and I crouched, rubbing my forehead. The next moment, a man was kneeling beside me, pushing my wet hair out of my face with his fingers.

« Are you bleeding? Or is this water? I can’t see. Come into the light. »

I allowed myself to be led into the corner of the yard, where a yellow oil lamp rested on a mounting block. The man touched my forehead where I’d cracked it against the pump. I was too embarrassed to look into his face, so I stared at my bare, slightly grimy toes.

« No, you’re all right. I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you like that. »

I looked up and saw in the gloom a man of about forty with dark hair and a slight smile playing around his eyes. Anna would have called him handsome, but I knew that men of forty were far too old to be considered any such thing.

« Christopher Rivers, » he said.

« Elise Landau, » I said, offering him my hand.

The House at Tyneford – Nastasha Solomons – 2011 (Editions Plume)

Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K.Rowling

26 samedi Mai 2012

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«  Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways. For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year. For another, he really wanted to do his homework, but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard. 

It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his front in bed, the blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a torch in one hand and a large leather-bound book (A History of Magic, by Bathilda Bagshot) propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, « Witch-Burnin in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless – discuss ».

The quill paused at the top of a likely-looking paragraph. Harry pushed his round glasses up his nose, moved his torch closer to the book and read:

Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognising it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burnt so much that she allowed herself to be caught no fewer than forty-seven times in various disguises. »

Circonstances de lecture

Relu en une semaine… en anglais, histoire de justifier cette énième relecture des Harry Potter !

Impressions

Comment dire… Ce n’est tout simplement pas possible d’arrêter de lire Harry Potter !  Alors, après avoir lu les 5 premiers tomes en français, les 2 derniers en anglais puis en français… il me fallait bien les relire tous en anglais. Parce que non, impossible de trouver meilleure plume dans ce genre de littérature. Tout simplement impossible ! Alors, à tous ceux qui rechignent encore à se plonger dans l’univers de J.K.Rowling, je ne dirais qu’une chose : foncez ! Pour ne plus jamais en ressortir !

Un passage parmi d’autres

 There was a soft, crackling noise and a shivering light filled the compartment. Professor Lupin appeared to be holding a handful of flames. They illuminated his tired grey face, but his eyes looked alert and wary.

« Stay where you are », he said, in the same hoarse voice, and he got slowly to his feet with his handful of fire held out in front of him.

But the door slid slowly open before Lupin could reach it.

Standing in the doorway, illuminated by the shivering flames in Lupin’s hand, was a cloaked figure that towered to the ceiling. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood. Harry’s eyes darted downwards, and what he saw made its stomach contract. There was a hand protruding from the cloak and it was glistening, greyish, slimy-looking and scabbed, like something dead that had decayed in water…

It was visible only for a split second. As though the creature beneath the cloak sensed Harry’s gaze, the hand was suddenly withdrawn into the folds of the black material.

And then the thing beneath the hood, whatever it was, drew a long, slow, rattling breath, as though it was trying to suck something more than air from its surroundings.

An intense cold swept over them all. Harry felt his own breath catch in his chest. The cold went deeper than his skin. It was inside his chest, it was inside his very heart…

Harry’s eyes rolled up into his head. He couldn’t see. He was drowning in cold. There was a rushing in his ears as though of water. He was being dragged downwards, the roaring growing louder…

And then, from far away, he heard screaming, terrible, terrified, pleading screams. He wanted to help whoever it was, he tried to move his arms, but couldn’t… a thick white fog was swirling around him, inside him…

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – J.K.Rowling – 1999 (Bloomsbury)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K.Rowling

24 vendredi Fév 2012

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Les premières phrases

«  The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other’s chests; then, recognising each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction.

« News? » asked the taller of the two.

« The best », replied Severus Snape.

The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men’s long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched.

« Thought I might be late », said Yaxley, his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. « It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good? »

Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved with them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of impressive wrought-iron gates barring the men’s way. Neither of them broke step: in silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through as though the dark metal were smoke. »

Circonstances de lecture

Je me suis mise assez tard dans la saga Harry Potter, après la sortie en salles des deux premiers volets. Par esprit de contradiction ? Peut-être… En attendant, une fois le premier tome ouvert, je suis devenue complètement accro aux livres !

Impressions

J.K.Rowling a une plume unique. Elle transporte avec naturel son lecteur dans un monde magique, et sait brosser des portraits de personnages attachants et plein de facettes. Mon préféré : Severus Snape (Rogue en français). Sept tomes que je lis et relis toujours avec le même plaisir. Accro ? Oui, totalement !

Un passage parmi d’autres

 « Where’s my wand? »

She reached down beside the bed and held it out to him.

The holly and phoenix wand was nearly severed in two. One fragile strand of phoenix feather kept both pieces hanging together. The wood had splintered apart completely. Harry took it into his hands as though it was a living thing that had suffered a terrible injury. He could not think properly: everything was a blur of panic and fear. Then he held out the wand to Hermione.

« Mend it. Please. »

« Harry, I don’t think, when it’s broken like this… »

« Please, Hermione, try! »

« R…Reparo. »

The dangling half of the wand resealed itself. Harry held it up.

« Lumos! »

The wand sparked feebly, then went out. Harry pointed it at Hermione.

« Expelliarmus! »

Hermione’s wand gave a little jerk, but did not leave her hand. The feeble attempt at magic was too much for Harry’s wand, which split into two again. He stared at it, aghast, unable to take in what he was seeing… the wand that had survived so much…

« Harry », Hermione whispered, so quietly he could hardly hear her. « I’m so, so sorry. I think it was me. As we were leaving, you know, the snake was coming for us, and so I cast a Blasting Curse, and it rebounded everywhere, and it must have… must have hit… »

« It was an accident », said Harry mechanically. He felt empty, stunned. « We’ll… we’ll find a way to repair it. »

« Harry, I don’t think we’re going to be able to », said Hermione, the tears trickling down her face. « Remember… remember Ron? When he broke his wand, crashing the car? It was never the same again, he had to get a new one. »

Harry thought of Ollivander, kidnapped and held hostage by Voldemort, of Gregorovitch, who was dead. How was he supposed to find himself a new wand?

« Well », he said, in a falsely matter-of-fact voice, « well, I’ll just borrow yours for now, then. While I keep watch. »

Her face glazed with tears, Hermione handed over her wand, and he left her sitting beside his bed, desiring nothing more than to get away from her.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K.Rowling – 2007 (Bloomsbury Publishing)

The Shining – Stephen King

29 dimanche Jan 2012

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«  Jack Torrance thought: Officious little prick. 

Ullman stood five-five, and when he moved, it was with the prissly speed that seems to be the exclusive domain of all small plump men. The part in his hair was exact, and his dark suit was sober but comforting. I am a man you can bring your problems to, that suit said to the paying customer. To the hired help it spoke more curtly: This had better be good, you. There was a red carnation in the lapel, perhaps so that no one on the street would mistake Stuart Ullman for the local undertaker.

As he listened to Ullman speak, Jack admitted to himself that he probably could not have liked any man on that side of the desk – under the circumstances.

Ullman had asked a question that he hadn’t caught. That was bad; Ullman was the type of man who would file such lapses away in a mental Rolodex for later consideration.

« I’m sorry? »

« I asked if your wife fully understood what you would be taking on here. And there’s your son, of course. » He glanced down at the application in front of him. « Daniel. Your wife isn’t a bit intimidated by the idea? »

« Wendy is an extraordinary woman. »

« And your son is also extraordinary? »

Jack smiled, a big wide PR smile. « We like to think so, I suppose. He’s quite self-reliant for a five-year-old. »

Circonstances de lecture

Lu il y a plus de dix ans… Le meilleur Stephen King à mon goût.

Impressions

Jack et sa femme Wendy s’installent avec leur petit garçon de 5 ans, Danny, dans un hôtel à l’écart de tout… Un enfant loin d’être ordinaire… Car c’est un « shiner » et il a un compagnon de jeu imaginaire. Dans ce lieu coupé du monde extérieur,  son don devient un enfer. L’hôtel vide semble prendre vie, pour le pire… Flippant.

Un passage parmi d’autres

 The first time he had been out in the back yard and nothing much had happened. Just Tony beckoning and then darkness and a few minutes later he had come back to real things with a few vague fragments of memory, like a jumbled dream. The second time, two weeks ago, had been more interesting. Tony, beckoning, calling from four yards over: « Danny… come see… » It seemed that he was getting up, then falling into a deep hole, like Alice into Wonderland. Then he had been in the basement of the apartment house and Tony had been beside him, pointing into the shadows at the trunk his daddy carried all his important papers in, especially « THE PLAY. »

« See? » Tony had said in his distant, musical voice. « It’s under the stairs. Right under the stairs. The movers put it right… under… the stairs. »

Danny had stepped forward to look more closely at this marvel and then he was falling again, this time out of the backyard swing, where he had been sitting all along. He had gotten the wind knocked out of himself, too.

Three or four days later his daddy had been stomping around, telling Mommy furiously that he had been all over the goddam basement and the trunk wasn’t there and he was going to sue the goddam movers who had left it somewhere between Vermont and Colorado. How was he supposed to be able to finish « THE PLAY » if things like this kept cropping up?

Danny said, « No, Daddy. It’s under the stairs. The movers put it right under the stairs. »

Daddy had given him a strange look and had gone down to see. The trunk had been there, just where Tony had shown him.

The Shining – Stephen King – 1977