"Russian boys never cry" says Valerie Van Oost

• The favorite readings, it is shared.
• Our community recommends a new book every day.
• Today, "Russian boys never cry - 2023" by Valérie Van Oost published on March 7, 2023 by Most Editions.

Marceline Bodier, contributor to the 20 Minutes Books reading group, recommends "Russian boys never cry" by Valérie Van Oost, published on March 7, 2023 by Éditions Most.

His favorite quote:

Why this book?

• Because it's an adoption story. Sacha is French, but he was born in Russia. For him, the few months in an orphanage are a story, just like that of Little Brown Bear. Russia? A setting that he discovered on YouTube wondering "if the Russians are completely crazy". Yet could this rage in him be the "Slavic soul", "black and yet luminous", books that his mother reads in the hope of understanding him? Of course not. It is a much more personal initiatory journey along the Volga that the book tells us...
• Because it's not just any adoption story: it's inspired by the author's story, self-published in 2020, chosen by a publisher to be released in 2023. Shouldn't the title chosen before the armed conflict have been changed? Before you reproach, just read what the author said on Instagram... "I imagine the distress even more acute in the orphanages, on one side or the other of the Donnas. Today, the main character is my son's age. The age of cannon fodder sent to the front. » Change the title? No thank you... Definitely not!
• Because the terrifying shadow of this fate that would have awaited Sacha if he had not been adopted necessarily hangs over the reading we make of it today. However, it is for all adoptions that this question of the "other destiny" arises. It is even for all lives, for all adolescences, that we can ask ourselves "what if"... The contradictions of the novel are those of Sacha, but they speak to everyone: inner emptiness and ordalic experiences, bourgeois family and popular intuitions, love and rejection of parents, so many universal subjects!
• Because if you don't like rap, then you're like Juliette! If you don't like Bach's suites, then you're like Sacha! And if you like Katy Perry... Ouch, that's another story: go to the book to understand it. But in any case, you are sensitive to music, because it says your emotions better than your own words. And that's all that matters. By the way, for starters, what if you tried the playlist of the book on Deezer?
• Because I recommend you remember the name of the publishing house: Most, which means Bridge, in Russian. A bridge, that's what the novel does. A bridge between peoples rather than between their leaders, a bridge between the living rather than between the dead, a bridge between teenagers, Sacha and Ilya, who need to find in their personal history reasons to fight and reconcile, but especially not in that of their countries. And as this publishing house is Belgian, the author is present at the Brussels Book Fair, which opens on March 30. Go meet him!

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot. Sacha has been adopted and his teenage crisis is "explosive". Yes, but her mother experienced a long "invisible gestation" followed by a brutal projection into motherhood. As for his father, he is troubled by this "form of fatherhood without a straight line". How to make the family work?

The characters. An engineer, a roaster. A Norman, a Versailles. A rigorous man, a cheerful woman. A scientist, an original. The boy "huge, dishevelled and protective", "the light of his life". A man, a woman... parents. And Sacha, in all this?

Places. In the Heart of Darkness, Death on the Nile... In literature, going up the course of a river cannot be trivial, and we understand it: all metaphors of returning to the source are allowed. But who knows what surprises a book has in store for us in which it is towards the mouth that we are heading?

The time. In 2023, the term "Russian" in a title cannot be trivial, let's not go back to it. But "never cry" shouldn't be either! Especially since in the passage of the book from which the title is taken, the Russian boys do not cry, but smile. And who knows what that smile hides...

The author. "All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is the same in its own way." It was a Russian who said it. Could Tolstoy have imagined the story of Juliet, Antony and Sasha? Certainly. But it was Valérie van Oost who did it, and in 2023, this is the book we have been waiting for.

This book was read with Google maps in one hand, a box of tissues in the other! I love the idea that the book tells a strong story, and that the way it happens to us today is also the fruit of a beautiful story. The result is a memorable experience.

To buy this book on Amazon,

click here

Want to recommend a book you particularly liked? Join our community by clicking here

20 minutes of context

Some of the links in this article are sponsored. Every time you buy a book through one of them, we earn a commission that helps us pay our bills. To avoid any conflict of interest, we have adopted the following method:

1. The contributors of the section choose their books, make their cards and their review independently, without worrying about the possible links that will be added.

2. Links are added a posteriori, each time we find the recommended product on one of our partner platforms.

Thanks in advance to everyone who clicks!

• Book sheet 20 Minutes
• Books
• Russia
• Belgium
• Book Fair