"Vernon Subutex Three" by Virginie Despentes

In this final volume of the epic trilogy, the parallels between Vernon and Jesus become more explicit as Dopalet seeks revenge for the attack upon him.

Vernon is the DJ for a series of 'Convergences' (dance-festivals) organised by his disciples in which the participants experience mystical revelations. But wino Charles has died and his last wish is to leave half his lottery win to Vernon and his followers. The prospect of money causes dissension and accusations and Vernon runs off in anger. Meanwhile Alex Bleach's first manager Max has tracked down Celeste, one of the girls responsible for the attack on Dopalet, who takes his revenge. The whole story is heading for inevitable tragedy. But of course there's a twist in the tail.

There's a little more narrative in this volume compared with the first but the style is still the same: we head-hop and each of the interior monologues is some sort of rant. The energy is unabated but the sense of doom pervades the final chapters. It's almost perfect.

Except for the very last chapter of all, which swirls into the future to provide a sci-fi dimension which I felt totally unnecessary. 

Nevertheless, this is a wonderful final act in a triptych masterpiece.

Selected quotes:

• “This is one of the things that happens on nights when there is a convergence ... A gentle, luminous confusion that makes you want to take time and keep silent. Epidermises lose their boundaries, everybody becomes every body; it is a boundless intimacy.” (p 17)
• “You leave a space for imagination. Kind of like storytelling by leaving gaps.” (p 24)
• “For old Charles, the cold hard truth of humanity was savagery. It was simply a matter of knowing who had the right to be cruel to whom. Everything else ... was poetry - a way of masking the stench of the corpse that follows man wherever he goes.” (p 36)
• “Good things come to an end, usually prematurely.” (p 36)
• “When it came to talking shit, he could open his big gob not once but several times a day.” (p 41)
• “It's amazing how enormous things seem when you’re expected to put them in your mouth. ... When girls give blowjobs, do they feel like they're sucking off the Empire State Building?” (p 55)
• “Human beings were morons. You really had to be two clowns short of a circus to worship a god that could create such a shower of shits. Liars thieves poseurs and predators.” (p 58)
• “The poor invariably resent the rich for succeeding where they have failed. There you have it. It's all about jealousy.” (p 74)
• “No one is solid. ... That is the hardest thing to learn. That we are tenants of a situation, not landlords.” (p 96)
• “Can someone explain to him why clothing manufacturers sew on labels so that they itch around the waist?” (p 119)
• “He loves the heat because it ... poses serious fashion problems: ridiculous hats, hideous sunglasses, short shorts, repulsive footwear.” (p 121)
• “When he was young, common people would walk along the marinas and stop to gaze at rich people's yachts. They were symbols of travel, of the exotic, of true luxury. These days the poor don't stop and stare anymore. Wealth is something they experience like a slap in the face.” (p 121)
• “The left wing refuses to admit that Christians and Muslims can't live together for long without killing each other. That said, deep down, there is a fundamental agreement: exclude the impure, the unclean, prevent them from expressing themselves. Create a category of massacrables. The frontiers might shift but the attitude of the border guards remains the same. You get out. I don't want that sort of thing in my country. The only variable is who gets put in the camps. Who is torturable, exterminable. Who deserves to be excluded.” (p 124)
• “That's the only difference between the sociopath and and the political militant - the sociopath doesn't give a shit about being on the side of the just. He just kills without the foreplay, without wasting time turning his victim into a monster.” (p 124)
• “Fifty years ago, the church should have built cathedrals in the middle of every deprived banlieu. And sent out their best preachers. It wouldn't matter if they cuddled a few choir boys as long as they understood their mission. To help those most in need. To occupy the territory. Instead of which ... the dumb fucking Christians congregated in rich neighbourhoods so they could celebrate the mass in Latin.” (p 125)
• “The root of the problem is that my worth as a white guy is your worthlessness as raghead. My high life makes you lowlife.” (p 128)
• “You’re either the butcher or the cattle.” (p 198)
• “Where men are concerned, ‘to desire’ is conjugated in the imperative.” (p 245)
• “Paris has become a dystopian piece of concept art, a gallery of atrocities, a daily display of all the things man can deny his neighbour.” (p 278)
• “He had that delicate politeness of people who know that evil truly exists.” (p 293)
• “The grenades the AK-47 the bullets. Manufactured objects.... They are churned out in factories for precisely this purpose. To kill dismember burn. ... We know what they will be used for. ... A grenade does exactly what it is supposed to do. Like an AK-47. Like the gun. The only variant in the equation is: did you know the people before they became corpses?” (p 353)

August 2025; 362 pages

First published in Paris by Grasset & Fasquelle in 2017
My English translation by Frank Wynne issued in paperback in the UK by Maclehose Press in 2021

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

Spoiler alert: Chapter by chapter detailed synopsis.

• Vernon has toothache and travels back to Paris for dental work. He stays with Kiko who has plans for writing Vernon's story: “I'm thinking about hiring a female novelist, someone talented enough to knock it into shape, but not too successful, otherwise she’ll do what the fuck she likes and three months down the road she'll be busting our balls with ideas we don't want to listen to.” (p 26) Metafiction!
• Charles is dead. His wife, Vero, also an alcoholic, has discovered that he has left her his lottery win with instructions to share half with Vernon.
• Vernon goes to see Charles, discovers he is dead and learns from Vero about the money.
• Dopalet is having a tattooist cover up the words that Celeste and Aicha tattooed on his back. He wants revenge.
• Vernon returns to the camp, bringing Vero with him.
• Stephanie, a new character, has met Marie-Ange, Sylvie and Penelope at a Convergence. She is going to Barcelona with them for a break; her ex-husband Max is tagging along.
• Xavier, Marie-Ange's husband, is with the girls in Barcelona. 
• Max, who was Alex Bleach's first manager, is trying to pump Xavier for information about the Convergences. Then, by chance, Xavier meets Celeste.
• Pamela, tired of doing the admin for the group, challenges Vernon and asks if he intends to keep the lottery money for himself.
• Vernon, angry and ashamed for his disciples, leaves the camp and, with girlfriend Mariana, goes on tour doing DJ sets.
• In Paris, Sylvie and Emile are going to a Madonna concert in the wake of the Bataclan terrorist attacks. Sylvie has lost all her money.
• Dopalet is having a breakdown. He is unable to work and spends all his time watching zombie movies. Max contacts him and tells him he knows about “Bleach’s confession. Subutex. Celeste. Aicha. The Hyena.”
• Vernon, DJing in Belfast, meets Max and realises that he knows too much. He sends a warning message to The Hyena.
• Aicha is hiding out as an au pair in Germany. She is having an affair with the husband of the family. The Hyena turns up, tells her that her cover may have been blown, and takes her away.
• Celeste is in Barcelona. The Hyena stashed her in Zaragoza but she grew bored so ran away to Barcelona. She works as a sous-chef and lives in a house-share. She has started tattooing again and has made an facebook page to advertise. Some of her previous friends have ‘liked’ it. A man has asked her to tattoo a wolf on his shoulder. He has asked that she comes to his home.
• Max was the man who arranged the tattoo. He took Celeste to a remote house. There things got out of hand. He had hired two thugs who beat Celeste to a pulp and then raped her. She is then put into the cellar and handcuffed to the bed. Dopalet arrives and arranges for one of the thugs, Franck, to inject Celeste with an OD and to dump her body.
• The Hyena has tracked down Celeste to where she lived in Barcelona but she finds that she’s vanished. Pamela has been to see Max, pretending to be interested in his idea of professional Convergences. She has surreptitiously checked his phone and pinpointed the house where Celeste might be.
• Franck didn't kill Celeste but kept her in the cellar as his sex slave, raping her repeatedly. She is rescued by the Hyena and Olga.
• The team have relocated to Paris where there are repeated demonstrations, many led by Olga who has turned herself into a demagogue, in the Place de la Republique. Vernon has returned. Antoine has learned that his father Dopalet ordered Celeste’s kidnap, beating and rape. And that Max was involved.
• They move to a house in the countryside It rains incessantly. Selim has met Aicha in Greece, she's pregnant. The news makes Celeste scream, giggle and attack Vernon: “Celeste turns around, and her smile has transformed into a mask of hatred, she stares into his eyes and says, this is all your fault, all of it, from the very beginning, you were the one who started it.” (p 322) I am the alpha and the omega!
• Solange lives with her binge-watching father and her mother who used to be a postie and a wino but lost her job and became addicted to anti-depressants instead of booze. The only talent Solange has is sharp-shooting. Max gets in touch with her.
• Leonard is in mourning for Antoine, his boyfriend, who was among the dead massacred at a dance in Rennes-le-Chateau. Everyone was killed. Leonard makes contact with Dopalet, Antoine’s grieving father, who, devastated by his loss, proposes that Leonard and he should script a mini-series about the people who were killed.
• Vernon turns up in Paris. Somehow he escaped the massacre. He is living with Marcia who found him sleeping rough. She tells him that a mini-series based on his life, a sort of allegory of Christianity with him as Jesus and Alex Bleach as John the Baptist, is a huge success. The creators, Dopalet and Max, are “the business double-act of the year.” (357)
• Aftermath: Into the future
• Vernon dies, 72, in Greece with Aicha and her daughter Sabra. Holidaymakers who saw him and recognised his remarkable resemblance to the character in the manga series of his life start talking about the “resurrection of the prophet”.
• Convergences have been happening, without him, all over Europe. In 2085 “music was banned from all civilisations administering the Great Territories.” By 2100, “groups gathering for clandestine convergences were persecuted and executed.” Europe is still inhabited in parts despite nuclear catastrophes. The Subutex cult moves off-grid and hides in deep forests and in cellars in cities. Eventually they are forced to flee Europe to move to the Great Territories. The cult of the Convergences grows. “It was not until the development of kinesics and time travel that the phenomenon could be truly understood.” (p 361)
• “People continue to dance in the dark” (p 362)