Summer of Reckoning

Winner of the prestigious French mystery prize 2018 Grand Prix de Littérature policière.

With its intense rage, corrosive boredom and low-life scams, Brunet’s Provence is saturated with broken dreams. The last flickers of childhood are terrifying, proving that, even under the strong sun, social barriers remain implacable.--Paris Match 

A psychological thriller set in the Luberon, a touristic French region that evokes holidays in magnificent pool-adorned villas. For those who live there year-round, it often means stifling poverty and boredom. Two teenage sisters have grown up in a world where the main distractions are hatred of Arabs and booze. When Celine, 16, discovers she is pregnant and refuses to divulge her lover’s identity, her father embarks on a mission of revenge. A dark and upsetting account of an ailing society, filled with silent and murderous rage. 

Brunet uses her tense and efficient novel to tell us a story of “people at sea, on a boat punctured just above the waterline, never far from a shipwreck”. No one describes better the poisonous claustrophobia of families trapped in small rural towns. She writes with a scalpel about couples, family, sexism, racism and poverty. 

A story that is dark and luminous at the same time, dark following the slow unravelling of the crime story affecting Celine, and luminous in Joe’s conviction that she will escape this sinister world. A novel that leaves you heart-stricken and seduced.--Le Monde