Hélène Frappat's 'L'Agent de liaison' Explores Familial Writing and Secrets

In her second novel 'L'Agent de liaison', Hélène Frappat continues her exploration of writing as a response to paternal and maternal inheritance. The narrator discovers her father's typed texts titled 'EN FAMILLE' and begins writing in their margins, echoing the motif of 'réserve' from Frappat's first novel 'Sous réserve'. The novel is structured around one hundred numbered paragraphs, a device carried over from her debut, but the narrative fractures through intertwined family stories, overinterpretation of signs, and cinematic influences from Jacques Rivette, whose work Frappat has extensively analyzed. The plot involves a child kidnapped near Parma, missing rings, a young woman named Sylvette who changes names and runs away, and the narrator's husband revealed as a family jewel thief and con artist. Frappat's writing grapples with the instability of feminine identities, as women 's'énomcent' (a neologism from her first novel), and the violence of language inherited from a mother who speaks in incomplete sentences. The novel is described as a balancing act between the capitalized 'EN FAMILLE' of the father and the 'sous réserve' of the mother, with the narrator declaring 'Je suis née d'un langage en guerre'.