Clothilde Salelles, “Our insomnia” (Gallimard)

Fighting with the night. In Greek mythology, Hypnos, sleep, and Thanatos, death, are brothers. They are sons of Nyx, the night. Is it for fear of dying that the family of the narrator of Our insomnia by Clothilde Salelles is not sleeping? At home, we have trouble sleeping at night. It is the secret of the little girl who speaks, or rather of the woman who covers the voice of the one she was to tell the story of a childhood in a quiet Parisian region with dad, mom and “the twins”, his cadets. In the “Insomniacs” family, the father figure remains the most mysterious. The mother, for her part, takes charge of daily life, always busy, monopolized by the little ones, the said twins. The narrator, from the age of reason that she has barely passed, observes the world of adults while trying to connect their language to what it is supposed to translate. “Journédifici”, “subdivision”, “air corridor”, “money problem”, words that she hears although they do not give a good account of “the range of reality”.

The father is still a hero, one of those funny dads who dress up as Santa Claus, tell driving jokes on the road to the holidays, crush everyone at cards, have friends with whom they drink… He who didn't sleep at night, disappeared in the morning to go to work and read the newspaper when he got home, decides one day to build himself a cabin to be even more secret than he was. To finally find sleep?, asks the narrator who paints a sweet portrait of a father who is always present despite his absence.

Clothilde Salelles
Our insomnia
Gallimard
Edition: 3500 copies.
Price: €20.50; 256 pp.
ISBN: 9782073081551