Amir is a prince. A brilliant, funny, courteous and sexually delicious lawyer. A “prince” who slaps the narrator, at a party, for conversing with another. What if this was just the first step? From this cataclysmic slap, the narrator, whose mother was murdered by her father, herself a lawyer, mandated to identify acts of violence inflicted on women, throws herself headlong into a legal case on the borders of the country. A young Indian girl was raped, tortured, murdered by three white men. They confess. Let them go? We release them…
Patricia Melo signs a heady thriller, dark, social, brutal. An Amazon novel in which the talented writer proceeds like the “gluers” who, in our country, plaster slogans on the walls of our cities to denounce feminicides. His realism, sometimes raw, sometimes magical, his fierce commitment, zested with humor despite the gravity, make these “stacked women”, shelled, a vertiginous spiral from which one emerges irreparably dented.
Those we kill, by Patricia Melo. Translated from Portuguese (Brazil) by Élodie Dupau (Buchet-Chastel, 304 p., €22.50).
The killer extract: The night was sweet, cool. I lit my cigarette and stood there with my arms crossed, smoking and watching the opaque sky. – This guy is taking your picture, someone said to me. Then I realized that I wasn’t alone. On my right, leaning against the car of the party organizer, was a guy in a jacket and tie, smoking. Behind us, the house seemed to vibrate to the rhythm of dancing music. The man pointed to the window of a building on the other side of the street. – Over there, he added. The observer, seeing himself spotted, slipped away. He turned off the light and lowered his blind. – These idiots think they can take pictures of all the pretty women who come outside to smoke, continued the jacket and tie, thinking to please me. I noticed that he was drunk. Thinking maybe I wasn’t smart enough to understand his spiel, he continued, “You must be used to it. Silence, on my side. He insisted, “Do you mind? Have your picture taken? It must be boring, right, being so pretty? – It’s a neighborhood quarrel, I explained after a puff of tobacco. – With Bia? He’s having issues with Bia? – He was filming, didn’t you catch it? To complain about the party. Too loud music.– This guy doesn’t know what it is, too loud music. From where I was, I could see the security guard next to the barrier at the entrance to the street, checking the cars arriving at the party. – Where do you know Bia from? he asked me. My cigarette was slowly burning. – We work in the same law firm, I answered. – Lawyer? Like me? I nodded. “Don’t tell me it’s a corporate party?” Bia was talking with a group of friends in the hallway, and when she saw me she tried to lure me onto the dance floor. She was even more drunk than the guy outside and was yelling something about my boyfriend in my ear. I let it jiggle under the strobe light and the ensuing situation felt like I wasn’t in my own life, I had mistakenly stumbled into someone else’s movie. I remember the feeling of having been pushed into the bathroom by my boyfriend, who had just emerged from the hallway leading to the bedrooms, beside himself. ” Who were you with ? he shouted. “Where have you been? The music made everything vibrate, I could almost feel its rhythm beating under my feet, on the tip of my tongue, and as he squeezed my arms and pressed me against the cold marble of the wall, I said nothing, I didn’t. I couldn’t react, in truth I couldn’t grasp that it was me who was living this cheap sitcom scene, me in front of this delicious sexual partner, this athletic, cultivated man, full of humor, who had become my boyfriend a few months before and had until then shown himself to be as courteous, respectful and amiable as I wished, this man who was yelling at me, seized with a possessive and unjustified fury. The only thing I managed to do, while trying to defend myself and free myself from his arms, was to laugh. Only that. And my nervous, rather frozen laughter gave his gaze a wild glow, that of some dogs before the attack. Bam. Until then, I had never received a single slap in my life. Right in the face. – Bitch, he told me before leaving the bathroom.
