Summer of Blooming Desires

Author: Guy Gheves
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-05-01
Features: The story takes place in the summer when Simon is twelve years old. A coquettish woman named Ménette moves to the simple town. Her name often echoes in the bar, amidst the deliberately lowered voices of men and the crude laughter that occasionally bursts out. To the little boy Simon, Ménette is a forbidden name, a bewitching lily, an unavoidable femme fatale, and a dark past that lingers long after. The desire for love, the lust for the flesh, the wild instinct drive the boy helplessly. He repeatedly climbs the bare High Moor hill, like a panicked fawn in the twilight. He doesn’t know that in this summer when desire first blooms, his impending youth will wither prematurely.
This is the only novel by Guy Gheves, a renowned Belgian poet in the French literary world. In the novel, he writes with cold, incisive words and murmurs like a dream, crafting an unbearable confessional record where death is everywhere, yet love is absent.
Now, I live in solitude, surviving in a trailer half-buried in the wilderness. A woman’s silk stocking hangs around my neck, my heart is dead, and there is nothing left to expect.
The story takes place in the summer when Simon is twelve years old. A coquettish woman named Ménette moves to the simple town. Her name often echoes in the bar, amidst the deliberately lowered voices of men and the crude laughter that occasionally bursts out. To the little boy Simon, Ménette is a forbidden name, a bewitching lily, an unavoidable femme fatale, and a dark past that lingers long after. The desire for love, the lust for the flesh, the wild instinct drive the boy helplessly. He repeatedly climbs the bare High Moor hill, like a panicked fawn in the twilight. He doesn’t know that in this summer when desire first blooms, his impending youth will wither prematurely.
This is the only novel by Guy Gheves, a renowned Belgian poet in the French literary world. In the novel, he writes with cold, incisive words and murmurs like a dream, crafting an unbearable confessional record where death is everywhere, yet love is absent.