By Bettina Heltberg. Translated by W. Glyn Jones

“Life is not fashioned according to literary conventions, but is a chaos of conflicting feelings and imperatives.”

The quotation is from Paul Auster, but it is splendidly suited to Iselin C. Hermann’s novel Domino – an absorbing, sophisticated, delightful novel, written with that great lightness of touch that is so difficult to accomplish, with careful balance and with a glint in the eye – and achieving a far more profound after-effect. It is a tender, subtle novel that can be enjoyed like champagne in the afternoon when the sunlight comes slanting in.

There are three main figures in Domino: Zéphyre, a Parisian consultant in the prime of life, Eric, the writer of pulp fiction and an auxiliary attending the sick in the Hartmann Hospital in Paris … and Toqué, the experienced Parisian who also writes books. Z…E…T, ‘ZET’. For the three Parisians – are one and the same man.

As in the case of a domino, there are two sides to all of us, and we can attach ourselves to those who resemble us. The whole of the teeming human game is played out in an extended chain of human relationships – and only when the game breaks down do we see the pieces lying there on the table with conflicting feelings and imperatives. Where do the different sides of the pieces belong? Who are they most? Who are we most?

One thing Zéphyre, Eric and Toqué have in common is that they have relationships. Complicated, not entirely easy relationships. Zéphyre is married to the cool Manon, but (in the shape of Toqué) he shares a bed with the girl on the other side of the road, Rose, a waitress in the Bouquet du Nord café. They live in the same street, she on the third floor, and he on the fourth. They can signal to each other from their open windows, and Rose is quite mad about her Toqué. Toqué has had a little girl with her – Lulu, who is six months old. His child, his illegitimate child.

So Toqué can go to bed with his little Rose with the rosy cheeks, but not much else. She would so much like to have him; she sacrifices everything; she bravely tends the child in herself – and the child in the carrycot – she whines and complains and kisses and cries and always returns to his embrace – despite all the disappointments. On one occasion she makes to kiss him on the Place de Clichy – But Rose, one surely doesn’t kiss in public? He had to say this. She is there for him, naive and without reservation; he calls her his little darling and keeps the game going.

Perhaps Manon suspects that something is wrong. She hires a detective who explains to her that Zéphyre is having an affair. But so have so many Frenchmen … is she really to take leave of the piece in the game she loves best? She herself has a dog, which she coolly calls Sartre.

Perhaps Eric is not entirely content in the Hartmann Hospital. Old Madame Fleurie has had a cardiac arrest and is dissatisfied with the hospital. She lives in Rue de Faubourg-Saint-Honoré and wants both a bottle of Mouton Rotschild and a personal home help, and Eric offers his services. A wage rise, and we’ll talk no more about that, says the bluff old chap. He becomes her home help, taking her to lunch and concerts, buying champagne – and perhaps he’s her gigolo? No, there’s only one side to him – the helpful side.

One day, a fourth main character comes into the book, the young photographer Sabine Cohen, who is married to the painter François and is the mother of two children. And this is where the central action of the novel begins to unfurl. It is a love story, one of the best we have had in a long time. For it is not easy for Sabine to move close to Zéphyre; it demands courage, mobile telephones, hotels, streets, light from in front and light from behind. The lovers’ conversations are authentic; infatuation and erotic desire crackle among words on devotion and words on betrayal – was it not François she loved? And the children can feel she is in love and that this makes her forget old Sabine. Or forget herself? The relationship between Zéphyre and Sabine is one of modern literature’s most attractive portraits of the panic and fundamental bliss experienced on falling in love again. They go away and they return home, and Sabine is forced to lie, and Toqué is forced to lie, while Eric for his part is forced to disappoint Madame Fleurie and Zéphyre is forced to disappoint his Rose. Domino – is there an echo of Edith Piaf’s Domino in this?

Is the domino only a piece in a game, or is he also a man? But which man? With a charming lightness of touch, Iselin C. Hermann roams Paris. She is inside and outside, inside the mind and inside the city.

The author herself is present, and this author is perhaps the fourth Toqué, the novelist. Someone has left an open book on a bench in the Boulevard de Rochechouart, a book that is a crossbook. What does this mean?

Crossgoods are life’s signs and pointing fingers indicating possibilities and the merging of fates, small fates and great fates in a synchronous network. The book fits perfectly in ZET’s pocket. The tail of a dream winds in and out of his brain.

A man with a child … a married man … a man with a lover … a man with a new lover. Is this a dream? In which case it must be one of the clear ones, profoundly entertaining. Who is he, and who is she, and are they to achieve anything together?

Iselin C. Herman draws loops throughout Paris, with light and shade, springtime and impetuosity and melancholy. This is an incredibly appealing and sagacious novel.

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