She leaves the city, society, all systems, the masks of all discourse. She remembers the brutality of her deflowering by an expeditious teenager to the point of rape. She breaks up with a rudimentary lover, portrait with an axe.
She leaves, with her son, a frustrating job for teleworking in the countryside. Aurore goes to live in Quercy, in the house of her deceased mother. And the chasms will open up in front of two characters, Aurore and Alexis. A western would mean going alone, towards the west: “A disproportionate, unsatisfied quest, which only discovers what it seeks, love and tranquility, on the verge of madness”.
In the August 31 issue of Le Figaro littéraire, academician Patrick Grainville wrote: “After the famous Feu, by Maria Pourchet, here is Western! It's larger. This prize crowns a novelist about whom we talk a lot every fall, but who until now had never received a prize. Which today is not really in tune with the times. “It’s a novel that goes against the grain, in that it defends a Don Juan,” argues Bertrand de Saint-Vincent, juror for the prize. She succeeds Joffrine Donnadieu, for Chienne et Louve, (Gallimard). The author of Western, (Stock), has just won the prestigious award with six votes, against four for Eva Ionesco and one for François Bégaudeau, this Wednesday, November 8. Acclaimed by critics, Maria Pourchet is now crowned with the Prix de Flore.
