In fact, it was on Wednesday that the work entitled A silent story will be officially launched. In this case by a publishing house which, like the author’s grandmother, has Saguenay roots.
“I still have part of my family in Chicoutimi, and I went there a lot for my research. Sometimes I walked past the La Peuplade offices on Racine Street and said to myself: wow, it would come so full circle if it was published there! It’s very symbolic,” says Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre.
The happiness that results is all the more sincere as the loop took a long time to complete.
Four years, to be exact.
Active in several disciplines, Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre has been immersed in the arts for several years, but this is her first book. (Laurence Perreault-Brière)
A period during which the artist from Quebec, while combining this project with several others, will have dusted off many memories, archives and silences. Always with the aim of making her grandmother Thérèse a little less “ghostly”. His memory a little more palpable.
Because the one who died at the age of 27, well before the birth of Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre, will always have been nothing more than an “absence”. A name mentioned on the fly, throughout family stories, without really telling the person behind it.
“Since I was young, it has always kept me busy, it has always piqued my curiosity. Then I ended up asking myself questions about how to talk about it. I realized that it was the story of someone who was absent. There are a lot of gaps, of silences. I asked myself how we can tell the story, not of a presence, but of this absence.”
— Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre
We feel them clearly, these long spaces and these large commas, throughout the family testimonies reported by the author. The information is sometimes even more numerous between the lines. At the turn of a repeated word. From a forgotten detail. Or omitted.
The book A Silent Story will be launched on Wednesday. (The People)
Very evocative, this way of telling also has something frankly poetic.
“I went to meet people who knew her, not really knowing what I was going to do with that word. And faced with the discussions, the way it was said, the hesitations, the silences, the repetitions, what we insist on, what we come back to, I said to myself: it’s all there!”
“There is a beauty in oral language that touched me a lot. I didn’t want to polish that,” added the author.
Another thing that Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre wanted to keep intact was the multifaceted, complex, complicated, imperfect portrait of her grandmother. Which is built thanks to the sum of around fifteen perspectives that are just sufficiently complementary. Even a bit “contradictory”.
“Some describe her as very headstrong, harsh, while others say she is on the side of joy, pleasure, extravagance. As a granddaughter, I like to imagine this woman full of life, full of joy, sensitive, intelligent. I find there what I want to find there.”
“If I had removed this complexity, this contradiction, I believe I would have moved away from the truth.”
The vast portrait painted also allows certain readers to recognize their aunt, their mother, their grandmother, noted Thérèse Lefebvre among colleagues and friends.
And at the same time it allows us to resonate with a whole generation of women. Who in some cases may have seen their destiny mapped out too rigidly.
“It also tells of an era, the lack of choice, of possibilities, the difficulty of dreaming, of imagining oneself differently. There was still a path that we understand was quite clear for women of that time, having to marry and lose their name. It’s not necessarily the fault of one individual, it’s an entire system that has prevented the lives of many women.”
— Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre
The book A silent storyby Alexandra Boilard-Lefebvre, will be available from Wednesday in bookstores. Before being the subject of an official launch, on January 30 from 5 p.m. at the Point de suspension bookstore in Chicoutimi.
