Julia Deck, rescuer as a mother – Libération

In “Ann from England”, the novelist follows the childhood and life of her British mother, who suffered a stroke at the age of 84.

An editor, a writer, a reader knows: the way a book begins is important. Julia Deck’s autobiographical novel begins very well, with these words: “We think about it or we don’t think about it.” The sentence has an air of “I think about it and then I forget”. Yet the matter is serious: what we think about or not is the old age of our parents and their descent towards death. Will it be lightning fast or slow? Will they avoid “the worst nightmare of the popular imagination, becoming a plant, a plant conscious of its state, a thinking plant” ? Faithful to the sobriety and irony that she has demonstrated with talent since her first novel, Viviane Elisabeth Fauville (Minuit, 2012), Julia Deck does not dramatize, without adding malice or humor, black or not. Ann of England is crossed by these qualities.

The book has two temporalities. The first is the setting of the last days of the author’s mother who, at the age of 84, in 2019, suffered a stroke at home. She remained alone on the ground for twenty-eight hours before her daughter and then help arrived. The author’s parents being divorced, since she is (in theory) an only child, she is the only one to accompany her mother from one hospital to another, in more or less welcoming departments. This lasts for months, while the pr