His new book, Ann from England, published in Seuil may well be called a novel, but it is completely different. It is a moving and magnificent story around her mother hospitalized at the age of 84 after a stroke, and on the urgency that she, the writer born in Paris in 1974, has to recount this ordeal and the life that this woman had.
This “National Monument” could be Johnny or Belmondo
Ann of England is not a princess as the title might suggest, but an Englishwoman born in 1937 in Billingham, 400 km from London, in a simple environment and who had only one child: Julia Deck. The father worked at theImpérial Chemical Industry. Although Eleanor Ann is not blue-blooded, she is a queen to her daughter.
The shock comes in April 2022 when Julia Deck visits her mother in her Parisian apartment and discovers her lifeless in her bathroom, victim of a cerebral hemorrhage which leaves her little hope of survival.
“You think about it or you don’t think about it. I’ve been thinking about it for thirty years”writes Julia Deck, beginning her story and evoking her need to tell the story of her mother’s life. And suddenly, it’s time to do it and face the mysteries that surround his life.
Hospital Arcana
The whole book is an alternation of chapters where Julia Deck recounts in the present the stations of the cross of a woman lugged from hospitals to nursing homes, and chapters in the past recounting the life of her mother.
The writer gives a good account of the state of disrepair that geriatric services often experience. A maze of care establishments where doctors are forced to manage these end-of-life situations as best they can, while “turning the beds.” Julia Deck discovers the brutal mysteries of the hospital, the degradation and even sometimes the inhumanity of its services.
gullIt was through books that my mother and I truly got to know each other.
Sad end for this woman who left a diary, proof that for her as for her family, writing is essential. “It was through books that my mother and I truly got to know each other.”
Julia lived with her mother until she was 22. “Most of the time, the two of us were alone.” Through literature, Ann had learned to “shape a story, set the scene, characterize the characters, tie the plot, chain the twists and turns until a dramatic or happy ending.”
Ann loves fashion, adores films with Gregory Peck and literature, from Doris Lessing to Stevenson through French literature. Passions cultivated at the University of Manchester and which she passed on to her daughter.
The secret
She soon left England for Paris and married François. Julia was born on May 18, 1974. She was a rebellious child but “Ann knows that childhood is a jungle and that learning consists of pushing back the branches with the strength of her skinned fists.”
In this diary written by his mother, hides a mystery, a secret. Her diary does not talk about her life when she was 16-17 years old. So what happened with Ann? And why at the hospital, in the few words she can still say, Ann claims that she had “two daughters”.
The hell of “private property” among the bobos
This secret has the feel of a thriller that Julia Deck handles with infinite tenderness until the end.
Her entire book is an ode to her mother, a love story gripping with finesse and brilliance between a daughter and her mother, and through this story a tribute to all these fighting women, to all these mothers.
⇒ Ann of England | Novel | Julia Deck | Le Seuil, 256 pp., €20, digital €15
EXTRACT :
“She experiences through the pages what she does not have the possibility of experiencing for herself, perhaps not even the desire as reality inflicts fatigue and embarrassment, when reading offers a pleasure expurgated from the unpleasant, in the comfort of a flowered armchair and a cat purring on your lap At the end of the day, the men and children reappear, who have led a life full of twists and turns outside. They bring back impressions of the world. outside, but these never equal the excitement provided by books.
