e ne retrouverai jamais dans mon ressassement même que l'ultime reflet d'une parole absente à l'écriture, le scandale de leur silence et de mon silence : l'écriture est le souvenir de leur mort et l'affirmation de ma vie.

Georges Perec remonte le cours asséché de son enfance. Longue marche dans le lit désormais inutile d'une existence à jamais évaporée. Pourtant, aussi disloquées soient-elles, les bribes, une fois rassemblées, finissent par faire sens. Et c'est l'identité organique de Perec qu'elles signifient. Sans doute, fouillant sa mémoire et les vieilles photographies, le choc eût été trop violent, trop enivrant l'encens du passé. Alors l'écrivain mêle la fiction au réel. Petite histoire savamment entrelacée, récit d'aventures qui ne prend sens qu'en regard de l'autre, qui, elle-même, s'appuie sur la première pour exister. ( )

[W, or The Memory of Childhood] is a short but powerful and disturbing novel which consists of alternating chapters in two parts. In the first part, the autobiographical chapters describe his first few years of life. However, he cannot remember much of his childhood, and we are given fragments that are amended and corrected, based on what he is told by the aunt and uncle who adopted him and other relatives. His parents are almost ghostlike figures in this narrative, and the reader wonders if they truly did exist. The fictional chapters are the account of a French soldier who deserts his post and lives in a small German town after receiving a new name and identity by conscientious objectors. He receives a mysterious letter one day, and the man who sends him the letter provides him with information about his namesake, a boy who is missing after a boating accident near Tierra del Fuego. The mysterious man encourages him to conduct a search for his namesake.

In the second part of the book, the autobiographical chapters consist of Perec's life with his aunt and uncle in southeastern France during the war. Once again, the narrator's memory is hazy, but his recall of events sharpens as the years progress. The fictional chapters consist of a story of what first appears to be an Olympic utopia on the island of W, located in Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago near the tip of South America. The setting seems to be idyllic initially, with friendly competition between the athletes of the four towns on the island. However, with each subsequent chapter another layer is peeled away to reveal a more sinister society, as losing athletes are starved, tortured and even killed, and fertile women are chased by the athletes and allowed to be raped by the winners. The officials overseeing the games encourage the increasingly violent and lawless behavior, and the villagers passively and unquestioningly accept what their lives have become.

The reader eventually realizes what the island is meant to portray, and the interrelationship between the alternating autobiographical and fictional chapters becomes apparent. I highly recommend this novel, but it is not one to be read at bedtime! ( )