With his first novel, “Ce que je sais de toi”, Éric Chacour achieved the dream of every writer, namely an enthusiastic reception and an avalanche of selections for prestigious prizes, including the Renaudot and the Femina, as well as receiving the Foundation’s Bourse of Discovery Pierre Prince of Monaco.
Published at 1:27 am. Updated at 7:15 a.m.
His autumn was just as wonderful as that of Kevin Lambert, with whom I spoke a lot during his Prix Médicis win. I had to meet Éric Chacour, whose novel I read in the media frenzy that surrounded it. He received me at his home, back from his turbulent stay in France, and I discovered a man as humble as he was sensitive, still floating on a cloud.
It is the journey that fascinates Chacour. Literature in Quebec is largely written by literati, that is, people who have studied literature or are active in the fields of writing or publishing. Éric Chacour does not belong to this inner circle; he studied applied economics and international relations at the University of Montreal. So why literature? How did he come up with this first novel, which is as moving as it is masterful and which we cannot put down?
“I think I’ve always loved writing,” he says. My big dream as a teenager was mainly to write songs. I created new lyrics for songs by Lara Fabian, Céline Dion, Patricia Kaas and Mylène Farmer. »
I never thought that one day I would write a novel. But I wanted to write a Romeo and Juliet set in Egypt, a love and family novel without falling into exoticism.
Eric Chacour
What I Know About You takes us into a moving love story between two completely opposite men, Tarek and Ali, a passion that will lead Tarek into exile in Montreal because it disrupts his life and those of those close to him Who was such a docile boy? But it is these moments when everything goes wrong that we sometimes experience, believes Éric Chacour. “I like the idea that we are not alive for a lifetime and that in the rare moments when that happens, we know how to connect with it. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
As a teenager, Éric Chacour particularly dreamed of writing songs.
What I Know About You is the kind of book you can’t talk much about without falling into the spoiler category. All I can say is that it is beautiful, sweet, sensual and full of surprises that create suspense and I emphasize that it is so well mastered that it is hard to believe that it is a first novel. And the funny thing: we also had doubts at the Alto publishing house, which immediately jumped on the manuscript, Éric Chacour tells me with a laugh. We thought it was an in-house author testing the editing process, or perhaps plagiarism. Because Éric Chacour came out of nowhere with this book that shook everything.
When a novel is born at the book fair
In fact, Éric Chacour was born in Pointe-Claire to Egyptian parents who met in Montreal, where several members of his family live. He grew up in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce until he was ten, then moved to France for about 25 years before settling back in Quebec a few years ago.
But for a good decade, “What I Know About You” was germinating in him, and it was born, so to speak, at the Montreal Book Fair (SLM).
Éric Chacour enjoys visiting the SLM with his cousins and when they learned that he had written a book, they developed a game to find a publisher for him at the many stands at the fair.
Alto Publishing was one of a cousin’s favorite publishers, and because the covers were beautiful, Éric Chacour sent him his manuscript. He barely had time to send copies to other houses before he was arrested.
In short, the first novelist could have tried his luck with Gallimard or Grasset, but as luck would have it, Ce que je sais de toi belongs to Quebec literature. However, that in no way stopped him from exploding on the French literary scene.
The novel was published in January 2023, but shortly before that, Éric Chacour experienced a strange book fair in Montreal last year. At a publisher’s dinner with his authors, he was the only one who had not yet published. “It was intimidating, but I was also very excited because my book was going to be published soon,” he remembers. It is also the salon where I gathered my courage and visited the man who is my absolute idol, Michel Marc Bouchard. I had a somewhat magical discussion with him. »
PHOTO JOSIE DESMARAIS, THE PRESS
Éric Chacour will be attending his first Montreal Book Fair as a writer this year.
It’s moving when you think about it, but Éric Chacour will be experiencing his first Montreal Book Fair as a writer this year after his successful return to French literature. Like Kevin Lambert, he accompanied his book on all platforms and even did group time Zooms with students for Renaudot and Femina for high school students. Three days before his appearance on the show “La Grande Libraire,” a bulge grew in his eye, he showed me the photo of his swollen face and I laughed until I cried. “The ophthalmologist told me: Don’t look, it’s stressful. I was on TV in the biggest French-language literary show. I applied cortisone ointment for two days, it was terrible. But at the same time I was happy to experience these emotions and wanted to return to this quieter Quebec. »
A musicality
Much emphasis has been made on the poetic nature of his first novel, but perhaps we should talk about musicality. Like Flaubert, Éric Chacour subjects his texts to an acid test: he reads them out loud, and if they sound bad, he contacts his publisher to modify his novel, which has been reprinted several times. “Maybe also because I don’t want this novel to be completely over,” he admits, his eyes shining.
Éric Chacour describes himself as a diligent and thoughtful reader. A single beautiful sentence can fill him for a whole day. “I think to write you have to have an appetite for words, but you can also work with something other than literature. For example, I love French songs and I think one of the greatest authors in the world is Jacques Brel. »
What if Lara Fabian or Céline Dion asked her for a song? “Well, this is the absolute dream! “, calls he. “When I tell booksellers this, I see them collapse! But it was really my dream when I was a kid, and I think that’s how I worked on my writing. »
We will publish this in the newspaper and in the universe – after all, Éric Chacour never in his wildest dreams would have hoped to experience everything he did with his first novel. So why not a song for Lara or Céline?
Éric Chacour will be at the Montreal Book Fair on November 23rd, 24th and 25th for book signings and will take part in Literary Prescriptions on November 23rd at 8pm, as well as a major interview on November 24th at 6:30pm.
What I know about you
Old
296 pages