ONE WONDERFUL YEAR
Rights sold to Italy (Barbès) and Taiwan (Ten points)
Eleven-year-old Tracey lives in Saint-Denis, between two housing estates: the “Four Thousand” and the “Cosmonauts”. She hates her Japanese stepfather, Takashi, who is trying to learn French, and she has a complicated relationship with her mother, Elisabeth. “The only thing you’re good at is ruining my life!” Elisabeth screams at least twice a day, before slapping her daughter. Things could go on like this unchanged forever.
Then, in September, Tracey goes to secondary school and things change. For a start, she founds her own religion, the Cult of the Number Eight. Then she has a little sister, Saïa, who she enjoys taking care of. But more importantly, her relationships with other people – her father, her mother, Takashi, her grandmother, and her best friend Cosimo – change. She even gets friendly with a boy called Rabah whom she used to loathe. For months on end the two of them explore Saint-Denis, their home town full of tower blocks, regimented streets and parks.
In the space of four seasons, one wonderful year, Tracey’s life undergoes a metamorphosis.
With her fourth novel, Cypora Petitjean-Cerf proves once again that she has an unusual talent for telling stories. Narrated by an eleven-year-old girl, One Wonderful Year unfolds a sequence of amusing scenes, with searingly real dialogue, colourful characters and irresistible situations.
It is also a tender book, revealing all the complexities of a child turning into an adolescent, her loneliness, disillusion, hopes, and difficult relationships with those around her.
Cypora Petitjean-Cerf was born in 1974. Her first book L’école de la dernière chance, un an en classe-relais was published in 2005, and she is the author of three previous novels, Le musée de la Sirène, Le corps de Liane and Le Film, all published by Stock.
L'auteur
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