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.