VALÉRIE

Two mismatched friends become something more in Bel’s Paris-set literary novella.

Paris, 2018: Céleste, a sensible architect, gets a call from her closest and most bohemian friend, Valérie Chaibi, a lesbian “multi-media poet” and urban nomad who is perpetually crashing in other people’s apartments. Valérie is calling to ask for Céleste’s help for the first time in their friendship: Will Céleste return Valérie’s 12 overdue books before the library closes and Valérie’s exorbitant late fees become astronomical replacement fees? Céleste agrees, but while collecting the books from Valérie’s current “arrangement,” she comes across a broken picture frame—a keepsake that made it out of Algeria when Valérie’s parents fled the war there, one of only two objects Valérie moves with her from place to place. (The other is a yucca plant.) Knowing Valérie would be heartbroken if she came home to discover the frame shattered, Céleste decides she will get it fixed and sneak it back into the apartment without Valérie realizing. When the plan goes awry and the books are not returned, emotions flare unexpectedly, and the opportunity for Céleste and Valérie to become more than friends presents itself. But can two women from such different places and with such different desires ever have a functional relationship? Bel is a lovely stylist, and her prose sparkles with surprising and memorable imagery: Discarded socks are “tartan croissants”; cemetery steps are “slug-snotted.” The dialogue crackles as well. When Valerie (who refuses to get a full-time job to sustain herself) demands, “Cél, tell me what it means to have the ‘freedom’ to faddle over quinoa,” Céleste responds, smiling, “You always go for quinoa…when you mock the middle class.” The book threads the tricky needle of neither taking itself too seriously nor allowing its characters to become caricatures of young Parisians. This narrative is brief, but the feelings it contains are deep.

An artfully rendered tale about finding oneself in love.