Based on true stories, the former literature teacher praises solitude

“I hated solitude,” writes Lambert de Wallis, a retired literature professor who lives in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne). This was before coming across by chance, in a doctor’s waiting room, an article published in the magazine “Géo”, discussing the world record attempt of a certain Cameron.

“It was the image that first caught my attention: a tiny islet lost in the middle of the North Atlantic. In 1985, a member of the British Special Forces stayed there for forty days, describing the place as the most most isolated in the United Kingdom So the most isolated place in the world and now a certain Chris Cameron, a former soldier, science teacher and electronics engineer, planned to stay there for sixty days, thus breaking the record. world of unleashed elements.”

It was enough to encourage Bernard Lambert alias Lambert de Wallis (allusion to the archipelago of Wallis and Futuna where he taught, this globetrotter having also settled in Ireland, Australia and Martinique before returning in mainland France) to take up his pen again, two years after having published, on his own, “The little girl of the lady with the bags”.

“In this intimate novel, I talked about the two things that matter most in a man’s life: the death of his mother (Editor’s note: Sharp, the character in his novel, lost his at age 10) and passion in love This time, I opened up, based on true stories experienced by acquaintances or people I met. For example, the journey of Marie, a female truck driver in Bressols, the story of. a very premature baby who weighed only one kilo at birth, that of an epileptic woman or that of an old man who will attend the match of fear between USM and Carcassonne, two years ago at the Sapiac stadium.”

Stories that pick us up on the threshold of emotion

Some of these stories hit us on the threshold of emotion like an uppercut in the boxing ring. Like that of Flavie, library director in the short story “Farewell to Books”. A woman who, since her child, “lived only by and for books”. Until this evening of November 13, 2015 in Paris. “On the evening of her birthday, she invited two friends to the Comptoir Voltaire bistro-restaurant in the eleventh arrondissement. It was cold but the terrace was covered with heated parasols. At 9:41 p.m. an explosion occurred. A jihadist terrorist had just triggered his belt of explosives. This is the seventh attack of this day. Flavie has numerous impacts to the head and eye, she can no longer feel her body. […] Thirty operations will follow. She was never able to return to work. She has lost her belief in all scriptures.”

With great tact and finesse, Lambert de Wallis relates the return to life of Flavie, returning to live with her parents in Montauban, and how, passing in front of the storefront of Maurice Baux, under the covers of the Place Nationale, she ended up rediscovering the taste for books… and ultimately for life. The Montalbanese author is convinced of this: “Solitude also saves, and more often than we think.”