Her latest novel The Secret Name of Things is a hit, her clear eyes mesmerize and everything she touches turns to gold. Journalist, writer, dancer, actress, Blandine Rinkel , 28, keeps adding strings to her bow. After L'abandon des pretentions , a first very noticed text selected in the Prix Goncourt for the first novel, the young woman talks to us about Paris and its codes in her new book. Decryption of a provincial who became a true Parisian.
A kitten who multiplies the caps with talent
Graduated from a master's degree in literature, journalist for Gonzaï or France Inter , author of a first novel about her mother with rave reviews, Blandine Rinkel does not stop there. Mi bobo mi intellectual, she is also a musician and dancer for her artistic group Catastrophe . Did you say hyperactive?
In his latest novel The Secret Name of Things , it's impossible to be mistaken. If she claims a fiction, we recognize Blandine Rinkel miles away in the narrator: like her, this young girl from the provinces (Blandine grew up in Rezé in Loire-Atlantique ) moved to Paris for her studies. Like her surely, she gives up part of herself to adapt to her new Parisian environment. The narrator also decides to abandon her first name Océane for Blandine .
In the footsteps of Edouard Louis
Blandine Rinkel tackles, with her graceful and fair pen, the feeling of a change of class. Because in her eyes, to become a Parisian for a provincial is to learn “ not to love but to know the exhibitions, to pretend to hate the metro, to complain about Paris, to go to the theater. ”
Then begins a dizzying metamorphosis for this student who, while trying to adapt to her new environment, gradually forgets herself to the point of being absent from her own body. “ The book tells of a change of address, a change of identity and a total change of way of being, ” confirms the author.
Because Blandine Rinkel continues to dream of doubling up in order to live several lives, she confides that if she were not a writer, she would be “ president of the Assize Court ”!
A cheerful pessimist
Not the type to sit idly by in the face of a society that is going peanuts, Blandine Rinkel joined the Catastrophe collective in 2015, which brings together young people in their thirties. Through music, song, performances that combine theater, reading texts and dancing, they exploit all expressive and creative avenues to stand up to a world riddled with debts and crises.
In 2016, the collective published its column in Libé Since everything is over, then everything is allowed
Neither disillusioned nor cynical, Blandine , is categorical: “ The world is plasticine, not this inert and sad mass for which it passes. Multicolored futures await us. Don't be afraid, there is nothing more to lose. " Follow the guide !
The secret name of things , Blandine Rinkel, Fayard, € 19
