Elsa Boyer's 'Heures creuses' Reconfigures Time and Space

Elsa Boyer's second novel 'Heures creuses' (P.O.L) continues her exploration of discursive rearrangement influenced by contemporary visual culture. Following her debut 'Holly Louis' (2012), which used surveillance screens and video game pacing to fragment narrative, the new work depicts an urban landscape devastated by an 'invisible invasion' of 'dead hours' that cause economic collapse, ecological upheaval, and bodily decay. Boyer reconfigures cinematic affects into prose, drawing on Gus Van Sant's accelerated landscapes and Werner Herzog's 'Bad Lieutenant' (2009) for animal portraiture. Iguanas serve as temporal vectors, experiencing ancestral sensations from millions of years ago, creating a stuttering narrative that blends prehistoric past with near-future apocalypse. The novel avoids apocalyptic drama, instead presenting a world that never fully ends. Topographically, it juxtaposes clear geometric lines of American metropolises (Dolphin Express Way, W. Thunderbird Road) with disoriented spaces from the dead hours' invasion. Boyer articulates a desire for non-human vision and new memory. The review by Zoé Renard appeared in artpress in April 2013.