Chemins de fer by Benoît Duteurtre

Florence, a fiftyish Parisian PR executive, spends weekends at her country home in the mountains of eastern France. She enjoys her work and the trappings of success but is caught between her two worlds—the sophisticated milieu in which she circulates in Paris and her solitary retreat in the Vosges, where she chops wood and cooks on a cast-iron stove. Every weekend she takes the train to the country, observing with increasing horror the modern “improvements” being implemented by the French national railway system—flexible pricing, automated ticket dispensers, and new train cars with rows of seats instead of compartments. The installation of a streetlight in front of her house—and the later addition of three recycling bins underneath it—sends her into overdrive, as she attempts to preserve the authenticity and beauty of her country haven. What she doesn’t realize is how little use the locals have for her outdated values and how much they want all the modern conveniences she considers so incongruous and intrusive.

Benoît Duteurtre published his first novel in 1985 while working as a newspaper journalist. His second novel followed two years later. In 1991, he became musical advisor for the Lyon Biennal of Music and began hosting a radio program on France Musique. In 1997, a collection of his short stories, Drôle de temps, won the Prix de l’Académie française. His novel Le Voyage en France was awarded the Prix Médécis in 2001. Chemins de fer was published in 2006.