Hélène, a woman in her forties, is considered a social success story. She has left her small hometown, has a long and successful education, a good career, two daughters and lives in a modern and comfortable house near Nancy, in the east of France. Yet she is disappointed, as if she had wasted her life. Christophe, on the other hand, has never left the town where he and Hélène grew up, he has not gone to college, he earns a living from a small job without conviction and without ambition, and lives with his father and son –one could believe that he has failed in his life but he still believes that everything is possible. The story begins between the one who left and the one who stayed, the one who succeeded and the one who did not. With a lot of irony, but also benevolence and tenderness, the reader gets involved in the flaws and doubts of the lives of these two characters in a beautiful reflection on success, the world of work, the passing of time, love and existence.

Connemara is first of all the title of a popular song from 1981 sung by Michel Sardou that all French people know. But it is an ambivalent song that is listened to by the young bourgeoisie in boozy karaoke bars as a joke, and by working-class people in public balls. Nicolas Mathieu is part of a new generation of committed and successful writers and he won the prestigious Prix Goncourt in 2018. In the novel, he explores the ambiguities of a France crossed by antagonisms but which continues to try to be one. Through the story of Hélène and Christophe, it is a story of settling accounts with oneself and with society, and it is also a story of personal tremors in the middle of life when everything seems already written and set.

Published in 2022, Connemara was the most anticipated book of that year's literary season and received an overwhelming critical and popular response. “A book that knocks you over and dazzles you” as one critique wrote about it.

We read this book in the spring of 2023.