INTERVIEW. “She was my center of the world”: Marc Lavoine looks back on the disappearance of his mother in a touching book

ALP: Your book is disconcerting: written in the first person, full of true facts, but shrouded in surrealism. The last weeks of your mother’s life, then her death, the central point of the story, are very real…

Marc Lavoine : Yes, I leave the reader free to make up their own mind: to discover what is reality, what is invented. All the characters exist, even if I changed their names. I constructed a dreamlike, poetic, surrealist story at times, precisely, because it was also for me a way of mourning and of writing about what my mother did not know about her and about what she told me. ‘left.

What would you like readers to say about this book?

That it is neither a novel nor a story, but that it is a tale, a universal tale. And that it is a book about women, about “the” woman, this mysterious island that men should respect.

Several years passed between your mother’s death and the publication of this book. Did you need a trigger?

When my father left, I stayed up. But when my mother died, I collapsed, both literally and figuratively. In fact, this book has been ripening in my head for years. My mother died about six or seven years ago. I don’t even know his date of death, I only remember the date of his birth.

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And then one day, I felt the urge to write. This book was born in three weeks, in one go. So I did nothing but that for days, writing, with no life outside of this activity which had become essential, going so far as to fall asleep on the pages when I was really too exhausted. I made this book, I think, because I was finally ready to let her go.

You write that your mother “died badly”. What do you mean ?

She could have lived a little longer, if I had made a decision, that of putting her in the hands of a friendly doctor, who had already saved her failing heart twice. I regret not having been more courageous, having given in to those who said she was in good hands. I carried this guilt for a long time. “Die better” means “die later”. I lived with the impression of having achieved things with her, but of having missed her death. Especially since she died without me, I wasn’t at her bedside when it happened. But it was worn like a parquet floor at the Paris Opera, worn by the friction of life.

“A mother gives you back into the world the day she dies,” you write. Do you have the feeling that you are a new man since his death?

In any case, I live with this lack, I think about it every day, but it’s not negative. I finally decided to leave her, because a parent is not yours. She was my center of the world, and when she let go of my hand, I didn’t know where I was. I looked for a long time to find her in other arms.

You also make this confession: “I loved him like I have never loved since”. It seems that life has since reserved a nice romantic surprise for you (Marc Lavoine has made public the couple he forms with Adriana Karembeu, Editor’s note)!

In fact, I had been alone for three years, then my anniversary album came out, the book was in preparation and this meeting happened to me… It literally fell on the corner of my face. But it was obvious. I’m happy. At 62, my life begins!

You were mocked for kisses exchanged in public with Adriana Karembeu during the Concerto for Peace in Paris last September. How do you deal with these criticisms?

I did not hesitate to be demonstrative that day, because I know the tabloid press too well: it invents stories, which are then taken up by others; I preferred to control the course of things.

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The photographers present were of course delighted with these outpourings, and the criticisms heard here and there did not reach me. What I remember are the words of the people I meet in the street, who tell me how happy they are for me. I know, in reality most people love happiness.