ABSTRACT
In Décor ciment , François Bon writes with penetrating insight and a new kind of humanistic commitment about a genre of contemporary city dweller. The anonymous not-quite-down-and-out, what the author calls the "tatters of people" are the one who populate the high-rise, low-rent apartment complexes. In Décor ciment, four suspects or witnesses are taken to the police station: Laurin, a sculptor; Goëllo, a truck driver; a blind-man with the Balzacian name of Louis Lambert; and Isa Waertens, the most vivid character in the novel, who is the live-in custodian or gardienne of the Habitations à loyer modéré (H.L.M.) and who also earns money by telling the future. Bon incisively shows, however, that rosy promises were doomed from the onset because of globalization. Moreover, by weaving in narrative strands about the mainly female victims, the author movingly depicts the not-always-visible individual despair that can result from these region-wide socioeconomic debacles.
