Audeguy, Stephane

S t é pha n e Audegu y "The Theory of Clouds" Translated from the French by Timothy Bent
Harcourt: 2005

Akira Kumo miraculously survived the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima only to reinvent himself as a man twenty years younger. Now an eccentric couturier living in Paris, he has the world’s largest collection of literature on clouds and meteorology, which he hires Virginie Latour to catalog. As they work, he tells her the stories of those who have devoted their lives to clouds: the English Quaker who first classified clouds, the painter who became obsessed with capturing clouds on canvas, and the wealthy late-nineteenth century amateur meteorologist Richard Abercrombie, photographer who may have created the only definitive catalog of clouds—but only one copy exists, and it has never been seen. Kumo sends Virginie to London to track down the fabled Abercrombie Protocol, a quest both surprising and wondrous, where love, like clouds, forms and transforms lives. Sensual, hypnotic, deeply erotic, "The Theory of Clouds" is a novel of clouds—both historical and imaginative—and how they shape our passions, our storms, and our stories.

The first sentence of the book starts: "All children become sad in the late afternoon, for they begin to comprehend the passage of time. The light starts to change. Soon they will have to head home, and to behave and to pretend." This sentence sets the tone of this book. The reader will rest in the person of the woman Akira Kumo has just hired to catalog his book collection of clouds. Virginie Latour is like most of us. We see the clouds. It is all around us, but we don't develop an interest beyond that.

I remember an artist who loved to travel. He told a story how he would travel to Italy and hike all over the places where there were evidence of the Ancient Romans. He spoke Italian very well since it was his first language growing up in Chicago. He loved to sketch and take pictures of things like the aqueducts that would span over small villages and pastures where Italians herded their sheep. More than a few times, my friend would be overcome by the beauty of these structures built so long ago and he would ask about living so close to them. One shepard who was herding his sheep for his father who was not far from them was typical. He would look puzzled at what the artist was talking about. They had gotten so used to being around those ancient monuments they receded into their memories. To them, they were commonplace. Maybe, clouds for all of us on our planet have become commonplace for us.

Abercrombie Protocol is the journal that is the thread that goes through the book even past the death of Kumo and Virginie Latour is on its trail. We, the reader read of its contents as we read of other people who were fascinated with clouds and then Virginie who fell under its spell too.


Biography of Author:

Stéphane Audeguy is an award-winning French novelist and essayist. He was born in Tours in 1964 and studied literature at the University of Paris, where he also taught. He served as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia at Charlottesville between 1986 and 1987. He returned to France and now lives in Paris where he teaches art history and film history at a local high school.

Audeguy has published two highly acclaimed novels: La théorie des nuages (translated as The Theory of Clouds) and Fils Unique (Only Son). The former was awarded the honorary Prix Maurice Genevoix from the French Academy, while the latter won the Prix des Deux Magots.
(Wikipedia)