Living in the heights of Roannais, Alma Cortès publishes her first novel, and invites the reader to understand how the elements and choices of life influence what we become.
Alma Cortès was undoubtedly not destined to become an author, a word which she still has a little difficulty in describing herself, and which she refuses to write in the feminine form, proof of a very good character. soaked.
If she chose to sign her first work using a pen name to maintain her anonymity, she has, on the other hand, always had the conviction since a very young age of having things to say and transmit, as well as the ardent desire to be edited. Not to market his work, but as the challenge of writing a book as a concrete object. It’s done at 45, with the release of Ghostshis first novel published in June by Editions Vérone, a participatory publishing house.
The transposition of a life made of trials and changes
A book that Alma Cortès took several years to write, to the rhythm of her inspirations, but also of her life constraints. Because if she wondered for a long time what to write, it is indeed an autobiographical novel that it is, with the transposition onto paper of a life made of trials and changes. A life that may seem tormented at first, but ultimately so similar to that of many, with ups and downs. A life of encounters with people, places, animals, emotions and the repercussions that this brings. So many ghosts, happy or not, from her past that Alma Cortès wanted to share, as testimonies of her life and her feelings, and in which everyone can perhaps find themselves.
She, who moved a lot to follow her parents in her childhood, has retained this absolute necessity of not lingering in one place. She also claims an assumed misanthropy and a disinterest in humanity, which justifies her permanent need to go elsewhere to see other faces.
His book Ghosts is the transcription of all these places of life that she knew. It is a succession of places and characters who enter the life of the narrator, the author, and who constitute so many tributes or reminders and memories, good or not. First paradox: Alma Cortès claims to be self-sufficient and despises social interactions, but is deeply marked by the people she has met. We then discover the construction of a complex personality, perhaps a little tortured, while following the path to get there. Because if Alma Cortès is indeed a pseudonym, the 24 “elsewheres” which punctuate the book like so many chapters are indeed her life.
Talented pen
A complex and torn book, like its author. When asked what she expects from readers’ feedback, she replies in all her misanthropy that she doesn’t care about people’s opinions. More bravado, when we know that the book is full of 242 pages of stories, so many stories that we can feel the absolute need to tell everyone about, and which are not lacking in interest. The reader’s curiosity will be piqued, perhaps by voyeurism, but also, it must be admitted, by a talented pen and an effective style. Ghosts is in the image of its author: a complete paradox, a little theatrical but touching. Promoted without conviction, it nonetheless remains a little literary UFO, available in all bookstores on simple request.
Caregiver and “self-denier”
In Ghosts, Alma Cortès speaks frankly and without taboos about her companion, who suffers from “borderline state” personality disorder (a psychiatric term describing a personality which is characterized by a constant tendency towards instability and hypersensitivity.) . She also recounts her decade of experience as a nursing assistant in nursing homes, through descriptions of real-life situations which paint an unflattering portrait of the world of caring for dependent people.
A caring world that she disowned, after trying to become a nurse to change it. Second paradox. Fantômes therefore also deals with the discomfort of life as a caregiver and its disillusionments, the psychological and physical fatigue that it causes. “I thought that becoming a nurse, perhaps a manager, would allow me to change things, to break the ideas of theorists. It was a deception. Today I know I don’t want to help anymore. “Caring consumes you, it’s also self-denying, you have to step aside and put yourself aside,” she believes.
Rémy Rondelet
Practical. Ghosts, €19. Verona Editions.
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