Dr. Patrick Moran, Associate Professor of French, shares about his recently published novel Metalya entre les mondes (Mnémos, 2022).
Art: Lazare Gvimradze / Layout: Atelier Octobre Rouge
What is the novel about?
Metalya entre les mondes (Metalya Between Worlds) is a contemporary crime novel set in a fictional seaside metropolis. It’s an homage to the hard-boiled detective stories of West Coast writers like Dashiell Hammett and Dorothy B. Hughes: a tale of murder, corruption, betrayal, and truths that are too poisonous to handle.
At the same time, it’s also a bit of a fantasy novel: it’s set in the distant future of my previous two novels, La Crécerelle and Les Six Cauchemars, which were traditional sword-and-sorcery, and it has weird magical elements, both divinatory and reality-bending.
It’s also a bit of a science-fiction story: it explores the fuzzy boundary between magic, science and fringe speculation, while allowing me to dive into contemporary issues such as hyper-capitalism and the collusion between political institutions and private interests. It also has car chases, weird New Age cults, gangsters on superyachts, and a talking octopus. Something for everybody.
“There’s a family resemblance between sword-and-sorcery and the hard-boiled genre: they’re two forms of pulp fiction, born in the literary slums of the interwar period, fascinated by ambiguous antiheroes who care more about survival than ideals.”
What inspired you to write the book?
After writing two sword-and-sorcery novels that were very grim and gritty, I think I wanted to explore a different kind of tone, something sunnier and more laid back. At the same time, there’s a family resemblance between sword-and-sorcery and the hard-boiled genre: they’re two forms of pulp fiction, born in the literary slums of the interwar period, fascinated by ambiguous antiheroes who care more about survival than ideals. They favour short, breakneck tales over sprawling sagas.
Metalya, the novel’s eponymous protagonist, is an everyperson: she tries her best, but her principles sometimes collide with her laziness, and she’s acutely aware that she’s a very small fish in a very large pond. It was nice to construct a character that felt relatable (she even has my mild OCD), after two novels spent in the company of somewhat outsized protagonists. I’ve always enjoyed the trope of the ‘clueless detective’—like The Dude in The Big Lebowski or Doc Sportello in Inherent Vice. Metalya isn’t clueless, but she wishes she could work less hard than she does. I think we can all relate to that.
What was the writing process like?
Books don’t need soundtracks, but book writing sometimes does. I wrote Metalya entre les mondes immersed in music genres that end in -wave: chillwave, vaporwave, synthwave… Someone trying to pinpoint the vibe of the novel could just listen to artists and bands like Washed Out, Toro y Moi, Ken Marino, Macintosh Plus and Magdalena Bay, and skip reading the book entirely. Though I obviously recommend reading the book—especially if you’re curious about that talking octopus I mentioned earlier.
