'Suicide' by Edouard Levé

In this book, Levé ostensibly addresses a childhood friend who committed suicide twenty years ago, at the age of twenty-five. Levé has felt closer to his friend after his suicide than he ever did in the days of their friendship, and speculates about how death has rewritten his friend’s life: "I've never heard a single person, since your death, tell your life story starting at the beginning. Your suicide has become the foundational act." The text takes the form of memories and observations, structured in a seemingly casual way, all in a second person register, which seems at times projected onto the reader, but which, as the book proceeds and Levé provides more and more intimations that he could not have had access to, the reader begins to realise is referring to Levé himself. The text is full of ironies, self-obsession and slippery logic ("You don't make me sad, but solemn. I take advantage on your behalf of things you can no longer experience. Dead, you make me more alive.") and is stubbornly opaque about the specific motivations (if any) for the suicide (other than “The desire to live could not be dictated to you. The moments of happiness you knew came unbidden. You could understand their sources, but you could not reproduce them.”). Levé is under no illusions about the effects of suicide on the bereaved, but is himself numbed to them: “Your regrets would disappear along with you: your survivors would be alone in carrying the pain of your death. The selfishness of your death displeased you. But, all things considered, the lull of death won out over life’s commotion.” Ten days after delivering the manuscript of this book to his publisher Levé committed suicide.

(April 2014)