The Confessional

PARIS. A cathedral covered in tarpaulin, a temporary chapel, a light-wood confessional.Marie Leblanc restores icons at the Cluny Museum: varnish to be thinned, gilding to be retouched, cracks to be preserved. In her life, nothing goes to plan. Ever since an affair shattered her marriage, she has lived with one certainty: she ‘pushed’ David, her husband, towards his downfall. When the guilt becomes unbearable, she returns to a ritual she has not practised for fifteen years: confession.Behind the grille, Father Matthieu Savon, a Jesuit, listens with a precision that disarms. He does not promise oblivion: he speaks of wounds, of truth, of possible atonement. Marie returns, week after week. Confessions turn into questions. Questions into silence. And in the Paris of Notre-Dame under reconstruction, a presence is born where there should be nothing but a sacrament.As the gold returns to the penitent Madeleine, Matthieu’s defences begin to crack. What is a vocation worth if it serves only to flee from life? What is love worth if it seeks only to hide?Around them: Sister Agnès, the chapel’s clear-sighted guardian, and Céline, Marie’s sister, who offers beers when the prayers become too heavy. The quays, the workshops, the scaffolding—everything speaks of reconstruction: what can be saved, what must be left to bear its scar. A novel for readers of contemporary literature, forbidden love stories and intimate dramas, written in precise, tender, luminous language.Le Confessionnal is a literary and sensual novel about forgiveness without erasure, faith without pretence, and the moment when one must choose what to repair… and what to accept. Read more