The Martins

David Foenkinos

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EPILOGUE
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David Foenkinos is the author of 17 novels. His books have been translated into 40 languages. His novel Delicacy was made into a film starring Audrey Tautou. He received the 2014 Prix Renaudot and Prix Goncourt des lycéens for Charlotte.

Sam Taylor is an author and former correspondent for The Observer. His translations include Laurent Binet’s HHhH, Leïla Slimani’s Lullaby and Maylis de Kerangal’s The Heart, for which he won the French-American Foundation Translation Prize.

THE MARTINS

David Foenkinos

Translated from the French by Sam Taylor

Gallic Books

London

A Gallic Book

First published in France as La famille Martin

by Éditions Gallimard

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Gallic Books,

12 Eccleston Street, London, SW1W 9LT

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

No reproduction without permission

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-19-13547-30-1

Typeset in Fournier MT by Gallic Books

Printed in the UK by CPI (CR0 4YY)

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The value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.

Milan Kundera

1

I was struggling to write. I was going round in circles. For years I’d invented the stories I wrote, rarely tapping into reality. I was working on a novel about a writers’ workshop. The action took place during a weekend devoted to words. But I couldn’t find those words. My characters made my head spin with boredom. Any real-life story would be better than this, I thought. Any non-fictional existence. Often during book signings, readers would come up to me and say: ‘You should write about my life – it’s incredible!’ This was almost certainly true. I could go into the street, stop the first person I met, ask them for a few biographical details, and whatever they told me would, I felt sure, inspire me more than anything I could make up myself. That was how it started. I actually told myself: go out into the street and the first person you see will be the subject of your next book.

2

There was a travel agency below my apartment; I walked past that strange, dimly lit office every day. One of the women who worked there would often come outside to smoke a cigarette. She would stand there, practically motionless, staring at her phone. I would sometimes wonder what she was thinking about, because I do believe that total strangers have lives of their own. So that day I went outside and thought: if she’s there, on her cigarette break, she will be the heroine of my next novel.

But the smoker wasn’t there. A minute sooner or later and I might have been her biographer. Instead my eye was caught by the sight of an elderly woman crossing the road, pulling a purple shopping trolley. This old woman didn’t know it yet, but she had just entered the literary realm. She had just become the main character in my new book (assuming she agreed to my suggestion, of course). I could have waited for inspiration or for a more appealing character. But no, the rule I’d set myself was to write about the first person I saw. There was no alternative. I hoped that this orchestrated coincidence would lead to an exciting story, or towards the kind of insight that allows you to understand something important about life. I had great expectations for this woman.