Reeling

"Between 1984 and 1994, you were around twelve years old. You were approached by a woman inviting you to apply for a grant from a “Galatea Foundation.” After an initial selection process, it was suggested that you attend a lunch to meet the members of the judging panel.

We would like to hear your story."

"Reeling" is Hildegarde Serle's translation of Lola Lafon's 2020 novel "Chavirer". Referring to the original title (which might be more literally rendered as capsizing) the author explained: J’aime ce verbe car il a plusieurs sens et qu’il évoque du mouvement. Ce peut-être frôler la catastrophe sans qu’il y ait naufrage…

Serle has previously translated two novels by Valérie Perrin, for Europa Editions, and a YA series by Christelle Dabos. Lafon was previously best known in English for her 2014 novel "La petite communiste qui ne souriait jamais" translated by Nick Caistor as The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, but I suspect Reeling may change that.

Read in January 2022 the novel is timely for its obvious links to the Epstein case, although from a French literary perspective another link is to Consentement by Vanessa Springora, detailing the abuse she suffered from her young teen years from writer Gabriel Matzneff. Although the author has explained that the source of the novel lies in an incident in her own adolescence:

"Pour être complètement honnête avec vous, je suis partie d’un événement difficile de ma propre adolescence pour construire ce récit."

We first meet Cléo as a dancer in a Paris show:

"She’d lived through so many scene changes, appearances, a life of endless nights and fresh starts. She knew all about reinvention. She knew the backstages of so many theaters, their woody smell, those winding corridors in which dancers jostled, the tired pink walls and faded linoleum of windowless dressing rooms, those mirrors framed with light bulbs, the tables on which a dresser would lay out her costume with, pinned to it, a label:CLÉO.

A cream-colored G-string, a pair of nude tights for under the fishnets, a sequin-and-pearl-covered bra, the elbow-length ivory gloves, and the high-heeled sandals reinforced with coral elastic at the instep."

Then the novel takes us back to the start of her career aged 12, in 1984, in the Paris Suburb of Montenay, her dream to become a professional dancer. From a modest background, the privately-educated girls and stifling culture of the ballet school isn't for her, but she takes up modern dance classes. There, aged 13, one day she is approached by a young woman:

"Her name was Catherine, but she preferred to be called Cathy. She’d watched Stan’s classes from the hall, like those mothers who came to collect their daughters, but Cathy wasn’t there to collect her daughter. She’d approached Cléo as, dishevelled and sweaty, she was heading to the changing rooms. Hello, could she spare her a few minutes? No one had ever asked Cléo if she could spare a few minutes. Straight pale jeans over camel-colored boots, and camel, too, the long coat; a single peachy shade from lips to cheeks; wide silver hoop earrings; and a flight-attendant’s smile.

Her name was Cléo? Had she seen the movie Cléo de 5 à 7? No? She had to see it, an absolute must!

Cathy was there representing a foundation. Did Cléo have some idea what that meant? (Smile.) Well, the Galatea Foundation supported adolescents who showed ability, had exceptional plans."

Cathy first takes Cléo through a Pygmalion-like transformation, introducing her to Paris fashion and expense perfumes, before taking her to the "interview" for the Galatea Foundation, conducted over a dinner party with her and some other candidates, all young teens, with the Directors of the Foundation, middle-aged men. Rather than asking for the presentation on her dance-study plans, which Cléo had prepared, the interview is focused on her character, and in particular the requirement that she demonstrate her "maturity".

Cléo is rather ashamed at what transpires and when she is told she didn't quite make the mark is unclear if this is because she was too compliant with one judge, or not compliant enough. But she has already boasted about the Foundation to her schoolfriends, piquing their interest, and Cathy persuades Cléo that she can earn money towards her study by recommending other girls to the Foundation. The story focuses on one in particular, Betty, an ambitious girl from a deprived background and mixed-race (a Belizean grandmother and absent Albanian father).

This is a powerful and effectively told story, focusing on complicity of both individuals and the system - with class and race playing a part, as well as ambitious but desperate families who see only what they want to see and even those who were abused, like Cléo, helping facilitate the propagation of the scheme.

The novel's style, at least in translation, is somewhat distanced, deliberately (I think) and effectively so, both in the prose style but also the indirect way in which the story is told. We don't get the blow-by-blow details of exactly what happened at the interviews, although later stories from others involved make it a little more explicit, but we instead largely learn of Cléo's later life through the tales of others: a female lover; a roadie with whom she had a one-night stand; her family; the costume-fixer and dresser at the revue shows, and two documentary makers covering the scandal of the Galatea Foundation after it is unearthed in the late 2010s following the discovery of a batch of photographs.

With revelations about Ghislaine Maxwell and her role in recruiting, grooming and abusing underage girls, this book could hardly be more timely, and the first section gives us a hard-hitting exposé of how Cléo, just thirteen, is seduced by a glamorous woman into what is, essentially, a paedophile ring. There is little that is explicit but there is no question of what is happening. Chillingly, girls with dreams, of dancing in Cléo's case, find their ambitions used against them but what is even more heinous is the way girls become drawn in to 'spread the word' amongst their friends - again, something that reminded me of Epstein/Maxwell.

But this book has a broader remit than dealing merely with local sexual vulnerabilities. With great thought it tackles the idea of social and cultural complicity that enables such abuses to take place and remain secret. From the parents of girls who are both flattered and too concerned about their own daily struggles to survive to check on their daughters, to the acceptance of teachers, waitresses and other witnesses, to the sort of cultural values which mute women whether through guilt, shame, or a reluctance to take on a position of victimhood.

Without saying too much more about the contents of this book, it has a sort of textual documentary feel: the focus is on the girls, especially Cléo and Betty, rather than their abusers, and we see them through their friends' eyes as well as through their own thoughts. I'd say the accumulating impact of this book isn't on a sentence by sentence level but more through the sustained and impassioned ways in which it deals with its subject matter. A book of profound moral importance.

Many thanks to Europa Editions for an ARC via NetGalley.

I really enjoed this book it was definitely a harrowing read that dealt with hard hitting and emotive issues and lots of thought provoking situations but it was done really well with sensitivity and a raw emotion. The writing style was good I really took to it and the characters were so well written and well developed and I really liked the storyline too. An important book that wouldnt be for everyone but I really enjoyed it.

A harrowing look into the impact of grooming and abuse young girls faced in the false promises of chasing their dreams. This book felt like piecing together the shrapnel left in the lives of those effected. The book has short chapters with the story split into sections, it feels like vignettes of each character and cleverly weaves them all to fit into the overarching story following our main character, Cleo.

Following her life through her dancing roots at twelve where she is selected as a “chosen one”, to then recruiting girls for this esteemed grant and we continue to see Cleo’s exploration of her craft, relationships and the realisation of the abuse she suffered. I was particularly moved by her relationship with Lara and the exploration of her fears when she realises her baby will be a girl.
The setting of France was a prominent feature through the novel. Lafon’s writing set the scenes, I particularly loved the descriptions from Claude during her time as a dresser the chaos and intricacies of rhinestones, straps and wardrobe disasters were so vivid. The writing reads easily, I flew through this novel my only criticism is the ending section of the foundation being outed I wanted a little more as this section of the book was considerably shorter.

Overall, I would describe this book like looking at fragments and over the novel you piece the broken sections together to find how the cracks were made.