New novel by the Geneva author Marie Beer, “being of paper” stages the emergence of lies in a well -adjusted couple life. Over the course of sharp dialogues, the author addresses the place of the imaginary in our daily life.
Who has never lied? By omission, without doing it on purpose, or knowingly, out of interest or simply to exist? Choosing your job, your personality to create your dream life, your fiction, despite social injunctions, is what the heroine chose to the ninth novel by the Geneva Author Marie Beer, “Being paper”.
Overturned by a bus, Aline is at the hospital. Her husband Yann contacts her employer to announce her absence and learns that she has never worked where she claims to go every day. But how far is this woman, mother of two, will she be able to maintain her version of reality, despite common sense?
I think we can lie by being sincere. Sometimes it is the circumstances that push us there.
Aline has a particular relationship to literature, dreams and childhood. Small, she was tearing the books when the end did not meet her expectations. She is facetious, funny, fantastic, unconventional and deep. In her real life, reality strikes her violently and shattered a lie that has been going on for over ten years, in which she invented a teacher in a school. Aline lies on what she does and on whom she is. Over the book, the readership understands that this teaching position that she invented represents what everyone expects from her.
Inspired by a real anecdote
“This story emerged from an anecdote that I have been told,” explains Marie Beer in the program district Book of April 13. “A woman had invented a professional life and her husband realized it by chance, after years, trying to contact her at work. I wanted to understand what had motivated this imposture. Why did this woman needed to invent a life? Is it an interior injunction or did it come from outside, from a need to invent a character more in accordance with what
-I have never hid anything to you. I found a way to invent a place where the system did not want me.
Aline does not claim anything through this lie. She thinks no one will never notice and does not feel like we are wrong. “It is said that this book talks about lies, but I rather have the impression that he is talking about truths that we do not say. Correities that do not have their place in the couple, in professional life or in all the shares that we make. I have the impression that this Aline cannot share what she lives inside,” said Marie Beer.
Another point of view on the mental load
Aline has the impression that her husband is not receptive to her world. This is the reason why she is inventing a life that meets the latter’s expectations. Over the pages, it is through the eyes of Yann that we discover the imposture of Aline. A narrative bias of the author: “I do not have confidence in my character of Aline at all. If the story was told through her gaze, I believe that nobody would like to believe her”.
Interview by Layla Shlonsky
Web adaptation: Lara Donnet
Marie Beer, “Being paper” (fresh ink), March 2025.
