What are legends made of? What is it about them that fascinates us, draws us in and drives us to perpetuate them? What do their secrets, buried in the shadows, reveal about our innermost selves? These question lie at the heart of L’Invention de Tristan, a bewitching novel whose plot – an investigation of the work and life of American writer Tristan Egloff-progresses like a jazz ballad, oscillating between refrain and improvisation.

It all begins with a chance meeting. Zachary Crane (a tribute to Paul Auster’s Burning Boy?), a spurned lover and former fact-checker for the New Yorker, discovered the manuscript of Tristan Egolf’s debut novel in a second-hand bookshop in the 11th arrondissement of Paris. Le Seigneur des Porcheries became an international success thanks to chance encounters Between Egolf and Marie and Patrick Modiano.

Zachary then sets about writing a lengthy, posthumous portrait of the writer, trying to unravel the mysteries surrounding the birth and success of this novel, which was so out of step with its time, and Egolf’s equally shocking decline in his following novels. In the process, our buddying writer submits to an iron discipline, one that Stephan Crane would not have disowned: “To keep close to my honesty is my supreme ambition () A man is sure to fail at it, but there is something in the failure.”

One should add that L’Invention de Tristan is also a tender tribute to the publishing figures who worked behind the scenes to make the Seigneur des Porcheries a success: a constellation of male and female readers linked by their passion for books and literature.

L’Invention de Tristan by Adrien Bosc, éd Stock

Miriam Bridenne

After almost two decades of working in publishing, and a few round trips between Paris and New York, Miriam has decided to settle down at Albertine to do what she enjoys most: recommending books she loves. Somehow this also includes taking bizarre pictures for Albertine's social media outlets.

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