Used book – OPTION PARADIS, François Taillandier

Option Paradis is the first volume in a major five-volume family saga: The Grand Intrigue. François Taillandier reinvents the family and sociological novel: unlike his famous predecessors, from Émile Zola to Roger Martin du Gard, the author moves freely from one character to another, from one era to another, without concern for chronology. Each volume can be read separately and out of order. The events recounted take place between 1955 and 2010, and unfold in five types of locations: the rural world, the provinces, the classic city, the modern suburbs, and the globalized world. According to an anonymous "philosopher," Western society, in the 1950s, proclaimed that it would create "here and now" a Paradise that would allow it to escape ancient determinisms. He describes this secularized paradise, its construction, and its contradictions. Option Paradis begins in May 2001. Nicolas Rubien and his cousin Louise Herdouin, who has become his mistress, spend a few days in Burgundy, in the house of their late grandmother Gabrielle Maudon. Free from conventions and deceptive silences, they discuss their family history, their childhood memories, their marriage and divorce, and their love affairs. Louise and Nicolas are on the fringes of the promised Paradise and its values that shape individuals. Faced with the explosive sociological changes, Nicolas experiences both nostalgia and horror for the past. An architect fascinated by utopians, he is convinced that the world to come cannot be his.