A Sun for the Dying

If you remember Ratso Rizzo from the movie "Midnight Cowboy", sick and cold in wintry New York, heading south to the warmth of Florida, dying on a Greyhound Bus before he makes it, you will think he has been reincarnated into 1990's France.

Rico used to have a job, a house, a wife and a son, but now he drinks too much, sleeps where he can, views his wife and son in the distance as they go about their lives. He has begged, he has just seen his best friend die alone of the cold in a Paris subway station, and sees himself as next in line. So, he heads south to Marseilles where at the very least, if he is going to die, he can be warm.

This is a remarkable book that lets you into the skin of a person you may have seen in your own town but show more are afraid to talk to because he is dirty, drunk, and smells bad. It lets you see someone who was someone once upon a time, and for whom the world has shrunk down to today, this hovel, this meal.

The narrator of Rico's story reveals his identity very late in the book and it is unexpected. This book in all its sadness, is worth a re-read to understand how it feels from under the blue tarp of the chronically homeles who live in shanties under bridges, who beg at stoplights with cardboard signs. .... as Phil Ochs sang it:

Show me a hobo who sleeps out in the rain,
And I'll show you a young man
With many reasons why
There but for fortune, go you or I. show less

Izzo is credited with starting the Mediterranean ‘noir’ movement. This is an ‘on-the-road’ novel in the spirit of Bukowski and others. Gritty, terse, it is a very “Male’ book. Rico, a traveling salesman, sinks into vagrancy and homelessness on the streets of French cities and spirals into poverty and degradation. He takes a journey back to try to capture his youth, traveling from the cold North to Marseilles.

Rico has become lost to his family, wife, son and job – as events overtake him. He loses his sobriety, his dignity and descends into a hellish existence on the street. He makes poignant attachments to the people he meets on the margin of society, including a Bosnian refugee woman, forced to flee her country and resort show more to prostitution.

He recounts his past loves in a tender and sad voice – one that is striving to find solace and intimacy in a world that has betrayed him. This is an intense study of psychological stress and social degradation.

Very reminiscent of The Grass Arena, this book is bleak, sad and unsentimental. It examines the unraveling, the animalistic nature of survival and the tragedy that hits some people without good reason – and the doors of Rico's life close successively behind him as he sinks into his ultimately tragic end.

I almost abandoned this book after the first 70 pages; the gritty maleness of the book seemed too much for me. However, I was very glad to have read it – the character of Rico finally evoking enormous sympathy and ultimately admiration. show less

Great book.

Petit livre sans prétention, je me suis demandée au début dans quoi je m’embarquais. Puis je me suis laissée emportée, de misère humaine en misère humaine. J’ai le cœur qui s’est serré et je me suis dit que la vie était encore bien plus injuste que ce que je pouvais imaginer.
Une histoire qui coule et qui ne laissera pas de trace, comme tous ces gens qui la traverse sans lui appartenir. Juste un pincement au cœur et un désir d’une tendresse impossible.

"Le soleil des mourants", je l'ai d'abord lu à reculons... Pas facile de mettre les pieds dans ce monde-là... Nous savons tous, que ces personnes, ces gens à la rue, ces gens dans le besoin, avant avaient une vie comme la nôtre, et des rêves. On le sait, mais on préfère sans doute ne voir d'eux que ce qu'ils sont aujourd'hui.
Alors au final, j'ai bien accroché aux mots d'Izzo, qui m'ont fait voir la réalité.
http://ouistilit.blogspot.fr/2012/05/le-soleil-des-mourants-de-jean-claude.html

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Izzo-Le-soleil-des-mourants/10056

> LE SOLEIL DES MOURANTS, par Jean-Claude Izzo (2006, chez Babel, Poche, 224 pages). — Ce qui intéresse Jean-Claude Izzo, ce n'est pas tant de décrire que de comprendre la misère. Alors, quand il décide d'écrire la déroute de Rico, un SDF, il remonte aux sources, aux causes quasi imperceptibles bien qu'enracinées dans le quotidien. Ainsi, pour Rico, tout commence lorsque Sophie le quitte et qu'il finit par se quitter lui-même, se retrouvant très vite à la rue. C'est alors la débrouille pour se chauffer le coeur et les os. C'est son ami Titi, qui meurt emporté par l'hiver. Et c'est surtout cette idée : quitte à mourir, autant le faire au soleil et show more dans la ville de Léa, son premier amour.
Après sa trilogie publiée dans la Série noire Total Khéops, Chourmo, Solea, Jean-Claude Izzo amorçait déjà un premier changement avec Les marins perdus, délaissant Fabio Montale, ses enquêtes et le polar, et préférant le roman noir mais profondément poétique et humain. Le Soleil des mourants, achevé peu avant sa propre mort, confirme ce besoin grandissant qu'était le sien de s'approcher toujours plus près de la vérité nue, toujours plus près du soleil.
—Laure Anciel, Amazon.fr show less