In 2018, the Paris-based British historian Andrew Hussey was caught up in a riot while cycling in Paris, said Kim Willsher in The Observer. As he dodged chunks of paving stone and other missiles, and felt tear gas scorching his eyes, Hussey – “in his early 60s with a heart condition” – became fearful for his life.
Yet he was struck by something else: the protesters were mostly “respectable looking” and middle-aged. How could it be that such “outwardly ordinary” people had such visceral hatred of the police? And what did it say about France? To find out, Hussey set out on a journey across the country, from the “working-class post-industrial” towns of the north to the Mediterranean port of Marseille, where around a third of the population are of Muslim origin.
The result, “Fractured France”, is a “readable” and timely blend of “memoir, travelogue and personal confession”, punctuated by interviews with writers and intellectuals. If it ends up being “less about the French and France and more about Hussey and France”, then it’s “all the better for it” – since the author’s “meanderings” are what “brings it alive”.
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Hussey takes the “terms” of his enquiry from the “innovative geographer Christophe Guilluy, his first interviewee”, said David Sexton in The Times. Guilluy claims France is bitterly riven between a périphérique who live in the countryside, suburbs and small towns, and an elite who inhabit 15 or so vibrant “citadels”. This concept has “largely replaced” the notion that it’s only the banlieues, or immigrant-heavy suburbs, which are “seriously disaffected”.
Given how “compelling” Guilluy’s theory is, it’s a shame Hussey didn’t spend more time talking to the “struggling and increasingly estranged men and women” who are the subjects of his analysis, said Robert Zaretsky in The New Statesman. He spends too much of the book conversing with fellow intellectuals – or on “picturesque” detours into food and culture, which are of only dubious relevance.
The idea that France is “fractured” is of course nothing new, said Graham Robb in The Spectator. The discontents Hussey highlights – whether gilets jaunes protests by disgruntled motorists or the rise of far-right extremists – don’t seem “particularly unusual” to any “veteran historian of the fractious Fifth Republic”. Still, as an “on-the-ground” journey through the often “crazed landscape” of contemporary France, his book is “poignant, shocking, informative and funny”. It could even be used as a kind of anti-guidebook: “Where Not to Go in France”.
