"Vernon Subutex" 2 by Virginie Despentes

The sequel to Vernon Subutex 1, the middle volume of the trilogy.

Spoiler alert. Having lost his record shop, Revolver, and his home, Vernon is still living on the streets of Paris, although this time by choice. His friends from VS1 have all offered him shelter (the Hyena even joined him in the shower to clean him up) and now meet him every evening, in the park and the nearby cafe-bar, to feed him and buy him drinks and look after him. There is a sense of a guru and his disciples: Vernon has dissociative hallucinatory moments and hugs even his enemies, bringing them inner peace, stripping away their alienation and bringing them into the group. Sometimes he acts as DJs and they all lose themselves in the dance.

Meanwhile, we discover what is on Alex Bleach's tapes. It's a revelation that persuades some of Vernon's followers to take direct action in a #MeToo subplot (although VS2 was written in 2015, two years before the #MeToo hashtag began to be used on social media). This subplot gives the book a more coherent narrative structure. Both VS1 and VS2 have a bricolage construction being made from a tag-team of internal dialogues, often rants, but while what appeared from VS1 was a collage portrait of Paris, VS2 has a sense of a story with a purpose.

The sequel inevitably has less shock value than the original, and this defocuses some of the energy, but this increased sense that we are going somewhere  has made me eager to read the final part of this fascinating and original trilogy. 

This is definitely a contender for my book of the year.

Selected quotes: (page numbers from the English ppbk edition)

• “No-one likes old people, not even their own children.” (25)
• “Men are supposed to just put up with things and not bleat about being sensitive. Everyone proceeds from the assumption that they're obviously up for it. No-one bothers to ask whether they mind having their balls busted all the time, same as no one gives a damn whether they are not they want to be fathers.” (63)
• “Just because you're prepared to sell your arse on the streets, doesn't mean you'll make your fortune doing it.” (65)
• “A lot of people claim that they grow wiser with age. The truth is that they shrivel, they slow down. They lose their importance. They get trapped in quicksand and sink in good faith.” (79)
• “What was he thinking, back then, that stopped him talking to his last friend when there was still time to grab his arm, shake him hard and say, let's make the most of it, mate, let's make the most of it while we're still alive.” (108)
• “We entered into rock music the way you enter a cathedral ... there were so many saints everywhere we didn't know who to worship ... we didn't give a fuck about heroes, all we cared about was that sound.” (109)
• “Money is much better than drugs. It's the same basic principle, but overwhelming. And people say there are no side effects.” (118)
• “Compliance quickly becomes the ability to look the other way when you walk past the slaughterhouse.” (120)
• “A mind like hers should not be denied books, nor prevented from embracing complexity on the pretext of following some obscurantist mumbo jumbo.” (137)
• “It's hard not to feel a bit sorry for old people. They act like they're still young. Except they’re shriveled and mouldy. ... They’re still living in the steam age when everyone else has moved to touch-screen.” (182)
• “She had thrown herself at him, like a third-world country at a sack of rice.” (198)
• “It is not a cock that makes a man but the impetuousness of his desire.” (220)
• “Gaelle feels like a light bulb on its last legs, when it starts to sputter, to warn that it is about to fail.” (226)
• “How does a guy who's likeable enough but a bit short of change when it comes to charisma turn himself into the Messiah of the Buttes-Chaumont? The guy is homeless, stinks of sweat and wears trailer trash boots, but everyone treats him like he’s baby Jesus if he'd skipped the bit with the cross, he's surrounded by dozens of Magi who bring him gifts every day.” (232)
• “When urban hipsters start dabbling in spirituality, you know shit’s going to get real.” (233)
• “To be happy in love, you have to make do with what’s on offer.” (258) 
• “Penelope ... she’s a girl. Which means she takes everything hyper-seriously. If he makes one of his dumb jokes, she goes ballistic. It's like she's paid by the PC brigade to make sure no one has any fucking fun.” (259)
• “He died for me too, didn't he? You think I get lumbered with my sins just because I'm a blowjob goddess?”

July 2025; 334 pages

First published in French by Editions Grasset and Pasquelle in 2015

My paperback edition, translated into English by Frank Wynne, was issued by Maclehose Press in 2018

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

Spoiler Alert: a detailed synopsis of the plot of Vernon Subutex 2
Vernon has been very ill. He had a high temperature. He was terrified that he would die. He has been cared for by Charles, a retired alcoholic who has won the lottery and uses the money to drink with the down and outs living, like Vernon, in the parc de Buttes-Chaumont in north Paris. 

Following his illness, he regularly experiences moments of hallucinatory dissociation.

Vernon's friends (Xavier, recovered from his coma, Patrice, Emile, Lydia Bazooka, tranny Daniel and porn star Pamela Kant) have all offered him a place to stay but he prefers living outside with fellow down-and-outs Olga and Laurent. For the moment he has disappeared again. 

Pamela Kant visits Emilie who realises at last that the tapes of Alex Bleach's last interview that Vernon left with her might be valuable but before she can hand them to the group they are stolen by the Hyena who has been working for Laurent Dopalet, the film producer. However, the Hyena (who is now having a lesbian affair with Dopalet's assistant Anais) decides to play the tapes for recently-found Vernon and his friends (including the Hyena's friend, devout moslem Aicha) and at last we discover what is on them. Alex claims that his ex-girlfriend, porn star Vodka Santana, Aicha's mother, had been raped by Dopalet and that when she threatened to expose him he had her murdered. Alex himself has been threatening to expose Dopalet (and now Alex too has died 'from a drug overdose'). 

Vernon goers back to the park but now his friends regularly meet him there and take him for a few drinks at the nearby bar-cafe. New disciples join, such as Aicha's father Selim, and have their angers and sadnesses and frustrations eased; they become reconciled within the group. Not all are certain. Xavier, who now owns a rescue dog, a poodle called Joyeux, has his doubts, but Vernon seems to lift the weight from his shoulders. Celeste the barmaid who also works as a tatooist (and met Vernon in VS1 when she told him she used to go to his record shop Revolver with her dad, a cop) is sceptical. 

But Celeste is recruited by Aicha to go to a lecture given by Dopalet's son, Antoine, and disrupt it by coughing. Celeste takes more direct action, going home with Antoine, sleeping with him, and scrawling graffiti over his walls before she leaves. But Antoine hates his father. When Dopalet dismissed Anais in front of him, Antoine follows her to the nightly meeting with Vernon (via a meeting with Gaelle who seduces Anais away from her lesbian affair with the Hyena) and is recruited to the group, telling Aicha and Celeste how to gain access to Dopalet's apartment. 

The girls go to Dopalet's apartment and terrorise him, tattooing his back with 'RAPIST' and 'MURDERER'. His interior dialogue reveals that he arranged for Vodka Santana, Aicha's mum, to service other powerful men and then, when she threatened to expose them, looked the other way when she was murdered. “She had no idea of the gravity of the threats she was making. Certain situations necessitate extraordinary solutions, there are brilliant careers that cannot be derailed over some vulgar sex scandal. He warned her. She persisted. She had left him no room to maneuver: he had to let his friends know what was happening. But, honestly, when some minor bigwig had said ‘alright, then, she's left us no choice,’ he had not understood. ... He had thought they might ask some Chinese gangster to break her leg. ... She had to be made to see reason. ... When they had asked him to arrange to meet Vodka Satana, he did so, and when he saw the suave playboy they had sent to chat her up ... he had felt reassured ... She had been found dead the next morning. Accidental overdose or suicide. There was nothing to prove it was anything other than a terrible coincidence.” (247)

Loic, the neo-Nazi who put Xavier in a coma, is heart-broken that his best friend Noel has broken up with him over a stupid joke he made. He has contacted Xavier to apologise (he adores the one film Xavier made; he even loved going to Revolver, Vernon's record shop). He becomes reconciled with Xavier and is taken to meet Pamela Kant (he adores porn too) and, despite himself, starts dancing as Vernon DJs. But the next day he is ambushed in the Metro by Noel and the other neo-Nazis. his ex-mates, and beaten to death.

The Hyena, afraid of Doplaet's power and revenge, has arranged that Celeste and Aicha disappear. She knows she will have to flee too. 

They all meet at Loic's funeral but few of them actually enter the church. Instead they end up in the bar opposite, toasting Loic with champagne, and starting an impormptu dancing session. 

The Vernon crowd is now in Corsica. They travel around France arranging 'ceremonies'. As for Vernon: “He is making them all dance.”