Back in the days when the suburbs were the countryside, you’d sometimes come across rat trainers in the markets. This is the job of Urbain, who lives in a small bungalow with his daughter Paulette, nicknamed Belette. His meeting with Modard, a circus acrobat, and the complicity they forge over a few bottles of Sauvignon wine, will change their destiny: together, will they be able to foil the dreadful schemes being hatched by a neighbor in the depths of his shed? Unravel the mysterious attack perpetrated by the most agile of rats, with a muzzle so tenderly pink that it almost reconciles mankind with his race? Teach Belette the secrets of conjugation for good? Find out, at last, where the maternal Félie disappeared to?
Between the fly-catching twisters, the barometer frogs, the crazy weeds and the fairground hercules, Rose museau is a tender and hilarious noir novel. Half-nostalgic, half-fantasy, Jean-Pierre Ancèle’s universe reveals a gallery of characters as cracked as they are endearing, through tasty, virtuoso dialogues and a discreet, cheeky humanity.
