There are books that open like secret doors, novels that grab you before you even have time to close the first page. This one is of that breed: a thriller that is devoured quickly, like drinking a gulp of cool water after a long walk in the sun. You think you are taking a break, but the story carries you away, breathless, relentless. Four hours? Barely time to catch your breath. The story moves at breakneck speed, and one almost thanks the author for having scattered, here and there, dips into the past – life-saving pauses, narrative respirations that allow you not to faint from literary intoxication.
Three destinies, three unknowns at the start, three souls that chance or destiny (it doesn’t matter, everything blurs here) will link in a quest so captivating that we forget even the existence of dictionaries. A rare word? It doesn’t matter, we pass, we run, we let ourselves be carried away. Because that’s what it’s about: a race, a hunt, an initiation. Baseball, omnipresent, is not just a sport, but a living metaphor, a ball thrown through the ages, loaded with secrets, symbols, that magic that makes every pitch a journey, every catch a revelation. The author, precise in his accuracy, doesn’t bother with ornaments or unnecessary digressions. Everything is there, just enough to understand, to feel, to vibrate. And we find ourselves, page after page, running with the characters, searching with them, hoping, trembling.
The locations, then. Sets that are not mere backdrops, but full-fledged actors, mysterious spaces, almost sacred. As soon as the book slips out of our hands, we rush to the screens, eager for images, videos, as if these landscapes still held, somewhere, the echo of the secrets that the author has deposited there. The three protagonists quickly become companions on the road. Their faces are drawn in the reader’s mind, not because they are described in detail, but because they are inhabited, corporeal, alive. Around them, a gallery of secondary characters, all necessary, all bearers of a light or a shadow, facilitating or obstructing the quest, but always, always making it denser, more captivating.
And then there is the revelation. How many times have we read promises of exceptional secrets, only to be left with an unfulfilled, deceptive taste? Here, no. The conclusion is up to the expectation, rich, nourishing, of those revelations that leave you satisfied, but already hungry for more. Because we feel it, we guess it: the story is not closed. Shadows remain, corners to explore, mysteries that still whisper. We close the book wondering when volumes two and three will be released, as we leave a banquet already hoping for the next one.
We think we have grasped everything, understood everything, and yet we feel that the book eludes us, surpasses us, leaves us in front of paintings so rich in details that we have not seen everything, not understood everything. The author, like a magician, takes us far beyond the plot: he pushes us to think, to progress, to question our own place in the big game of the world.
Translation in English:
So, if you like baseball, history, esotericism, quests that pierce your soul, dive in. But beware: once started, you will find it hard to stop. Because this book, you see, is not just a read. It’s an experience. An initiation. A ball thrown into the night, and which, perhaps, will never fall back.
Learn more about the Saga AA: www.saga-aa.fr
The Grand Slam of Marilyn, Vol 1 of the Saga AA; Didier Cannioux, at Illis Editions, 19€
Available on the website www.illis-editions.fr
and from January in exclusivity on www.cultura.fr
Michel G.
