Laurent Binet
Translator: Adolfo García Ortega
Editorial: Six Barral
Original publication year: 2023
Miguel Ángel BuonarrotiGiogio Vasari, the duke of florence, Pope Paul IV, the queen of France… When reading a crime novel, having these characters is enough to attract attention. But if also The entire plot develops through the letters they sent to each other. Over the course of a year and a half, the literary prodigy we are talking about here is worthy of praise.
And that’s what he’s done Laurent Binet in Perspectives. A novel with a murder in the first chapter and subsequent investigation. A story of political pressures, conspiracies, betrayals, loyalties put to the test, unexpected surprises and a multitude of suspects mounted on the shifting sands of history and real characters. Smart enough to be almost all fiction. Attractive enough to not be unfaithful to history.
Smart enough to be almost all fiction. Attractive enough not to be unfaithful to history
The Florentine painter Jacopo da Pontormo (If you didn’t know him, I’ll tell you: he really existed, look for him) he appears murdered in the chapel of San Lorenzo where he had been working for more than ten years. Next to the body, an obscene drawing of Venus portrayed with the face of Maria de’ Medici, the Duke’s first-born daughter of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici.
Faced with the imminent scandal, the city’s top official decides to put the case in the hands of his friend, the architect, painter, writer and first art historian, Giorgio Vasarito clarify the facts, clear his daughter’s name and reduce the blow that such a scandal can cause to his dukedom.
In his research, Vasari will exchange letters with Miguel Ángel Buonarroti, Pontormo’s teacher, or with Bronzino, a friend of the deceased. And these, in turn, will share their reflections among themselves and with other real characters, who will go expanding the plot exponentiallyinvolving the great powers of Europe and putting the future of the duchy in danger.
An epistolary novel
As a writer, deciding to constrict yourself in an epistolary novel is a leap without a net. And doing it with real characters is putting spikes on the ground over which you fly. The risk is maximum, the plot runs the risk of advancing in spurts, the voices may become confused, the characters may not conform to their character, they may commit historical inaccuracies…
The result is a canvas where the portrait, the landscape and the traditional still life are shown full of strokes and colors.
And yet, Binet emerges victorious from this incredible tour de force with astonishing ease. The letters, mostly short, follow one another quickly. With frequent questions raised in a letter and its corresponding response the next day, functioning in conversational mode, shot against shot, but with a rhythm more typical of the Renaissance.
Furthermore, the light provided by one of the texts often opens the door to an unexpected path along which the investigation progresses, like the stream that seeks the gap between the stone to never stop on its way to the sea. The result is an immaculate canvas, where the portrait, landscape and traditional still life are shown full of strokes and colors.
HHHH
In 2010 Lauren Binet surprised to the international literary scene with a different book. HHHHwas a historical novel that told not only the fact of the attack that ended the life of Reynhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Praguebut rather the writer’s own obsession with that story and finding the best way to tell it to be faithful to it.
In ‘HHhH’ Binet broke the barrier between author and reader and made him share his fear of not being faithful to what happened
That novel opened an interesting reflection, in fact, it put on the table the crude and bloody idea that The focus of the historical novel inevitably marked it. And that the way of documenting influences the way in which the story is told and, therefore, how the facts reach the public dressed with a veneer of fiction or another, but never clean from the writer’s gaze.
By making the process transparent, Binet broke the barrier between author and reader and made him participate in his drama, the fear of not being faithful to what certainly happened and even of How was that obsession affecting his private life? in a fascinating novel in all the historical times treated.
Binet and history
Born in Paris of Slovak descent, Lauren Binet showed, by delving into the history of his own past, that he was going to be a different author, whom you should never lose track of. And what was I going to use? history as a source of inspirationbut that he was always going to treat it in an original way, always with one more twist.
Laurent Binet is the Picasso of the historical novel and his novels are like the games of a gifted child
Thus, in CivilizationsFor example, he played with What if?that version of historical novels that propose what would have happened if… And he plunged Europe under the conquest of the indigenous American peoples with a logic and skill that at the end of the novel made it difficult to believe that things had not happened that way.
Because in order to be able to distort history, to be able to play with it and get the most out of it, as he does Laurent BinetThe first thing is to know it well. Picasso said: “It took me four years to paint like Raphaelbut all my life in learning to paint like a child”. Laurent Binet is the Picasso of the historical novel and his novels are like the games of a gifted child: exciting and revealing.
