French novelist follows inspirations wherever they lead

Acclaimed French novelist Philippe Claudel says that he "hates" Paris. "The people there are very strange."

He says he is much more comfortable living in a suburb of Nancy in northeast France, where there are only 10,000 people.

As for his writing, inspiration comes "from a picture, a word, a sound or some music," Claudel said by phone from Knopf Publishing headquarters in New York City. Then he tries "to follow those first impressions."

In the case of his prize-winning novel "By a Slow River," Claudel said he was thinking of John Everett Millais' famed painting "Ophelia," of a young woman floating in the river. "It is strange, because we have the impression from the painting that she is asleep."

Based on a character in Shakespeare's "Hamlet," the woman in the painting is alleged to be singing while floating — just before she drowns. Millais did his work along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Greater London. Elizabeth Siddall, the model, almost died from a fever when the painter became so engrossed by his work that he forgot to replace the candles that were keeping the water warm.

Claudel's "By a Slow River" was originally published in France in 2003 under the title "Les Ames Grises (The Grey Souls)," and he won the prestigious Prix Renaudot.

In the book, the counterpart for the young woman in the painting is Lysia Verhareine, a young, pretty schoolteacher who enchants an entire French village when she comes to teach while pining for her lover, a soldier fighting on the Western front, not far away.

After she learns of the death of the young soldier, she kills herself and is found lying in her bed, her hands clasped on her chest. She is wearing a dress the color of "vineyard peaches" and brown shoes the color "the earth turns when crackled by the sun, when it becomes silky dust."

Claudel's book begins as a crime novel, centering on the murder of a 10-year-old girl, "Belle-de-jour or Morning Glory." But then there are two more deaths, of the young schoolteacher and the narrator's wife. "I try to work on the border of crime fiction and metaphysics. My right foot is in crime fiction and my left foot is in metaphysics.

"That is because I want to explore humanity. I try to approach the human being and understand the mystery. I hope the reader will be different after the reading — that he will see the world with different eyes."