Jean Pierre Ostende's 'La présence' Reviewed in Artpress

Jérôme Lebrun reviews Jean Pierre Ostende's novel 'La présence,' published by Éditions Gallimard. The story is set in a castle where B, an employee of the agency Admiration Service, is tasked with evaluating potential for therapeutic leisure activities for declining personalities. The novel humorously explores speculative deduction of the future from a consumed present, reflecting on the standardization of taste in a globalized society. B, an ordinary man, considers that Americans and Chinese would love the project, possibly winning the tourism operation of the year. The castle is strangely animated, and B works under the watch of a guard fascinated by Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining.' Ostende blends the fantastic with family history: dreams of grandeur, secrets in precious furniture drawers, and the decay of a family line. The closed world, reduced to definitive silence, is threatened by surrounding nature that sabotages development plans, seemingly seeking revenge. The novel poses a major question: what will remain of us, so preoccupied with fortune and posterity?