In ‘Rouges-Truites,’ Pierric Bailly takes on the figure of the monster for the first time

With “Rouges-Truites,” Pierric Bailly enters territory he has never explored before: the figure of the monster. His eighth novel remains faithful to the concerns that have shaped his work, but it also marks a sharp departure, plunging from intimate coming-of-age fiction and adventure into the murky waters of a dark thriller.

The familiar elements are still there. Bailly meticulously follows family and friendship, tracing how his characters change over time. As in his earlier novels, “L’homme des bois” and “La foudre,” the narrator speaks in a voice that feels immediately true, with enough conversational ease, warmth and familiarity to seem like the ideal friend readers would always want beside them.

The French Jura, a landscape closely associated with Bailly, returns as a magnetic and deeply ambivalent presence. It is so strongly rendered that it takes on the role of a character in its own right, both alluring and unsettling.

But the novel’s darkest turn lies in its portrait of psychological domination. Bailly, an author often associated with empathy and attentive listening, studies the narcissistic, violent and humiliating control exercised by a deranged mind through pages described as dark and chilling. The result is an implacable thriller that places a new kind of threat inside the writer’s familiar human terrain.