Nathalie Quintane's 'Cavale': A Hypomanic Escape Novel

Nathalie Quintane's novel 'Cavale' is reviewed by Yan Ciret in artpress. The book is described as a classic escape novel afflicted with hypomania, characterized by elevated mood, hyperactivity, and flight of ideas. The narrative follows a narrator's picaresque journey across continents, from Picardy to California, organized around figures like the fish (symbolizing the ungraspable) and spaces that reveal historical phenomena from the Paris Commune to modernity. Despite its apparent disorder, the novel is masterfully controlled, blending the heroic with the trivial and the melancholic with the absurd. Ciret praises 'Cavale' as one of the finest adventure novels, where the journey continues beyond the book's end.