Valérie Tong Cuong (“Aerobatics”): “My 19-year-old daughter told me: ‘I won’t live to be 40′”

This day is the day Eddie learns that his partner has betrayed him, leading the firm to bankruptcy. But Eddie continues to live as if nothing had happened, hiding from those close to him the fact that he is ruined. Even if it cannot last – the lifestyle of his wife and daughter will inevitably be shaken.

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The family, an exciting ecosystem

“As a microcosm, the theme of family is an exciting ecosystem, develops Valérie Tong Cuong, as we meet her on the occasion of the release of her thirteenth novel. Complex links develop there, difficulties for each member to find their place, different expectations, generational conflicts.”

“The internal wars” by Valérie Tong Cuong

Eddie conceals, lies, has his mother give him an envelope (she is the only one who knows about the shipwreck): for what reasons? We think of Jean-Claude Romand (who will hide eighteen years during his professional activities). “Since this book came out, readers have sent me their own stories, testifies the writer. The motives for lying are not always the same. From what I was able to understand regarding Jean-Claude Romand, the question of ego was major. Eddie is in a state of panic and total disarray, he sees no other solution than to lie. He was raised with the idea that a man’s accomplishment, the success of a life, came through material success. When he learns that he is ruined, he suddenly loses everything that made up his identity.

It is no coincidence that the parents that Valérie Tong Cuong portrays are children of the 70s. “They built themselves according to patterns that were transmitted to them by their own parents”, details the author. After that of the man, the role of the woman is, initially, stereotypical to say the least. “A sacrificial mother, who will support her husband, protect her daughter. She comes from a generation where women fade away in favor of a role.”

The balance is precarious. All the more unstable since their child, Leni, is a young girl who could not be more contemporary. In an uncertain 21st century, she affirms that she will not have children and cannot stand being talked to about studies and careers. She will give herself entirely to a sport that will allow her to feel alive. “I have four children. My last one will be 20 next month. She was the first one who told me: ‘I won’t live to be 40′”, confides Valérie Tong Cuong. A sentence that we find text in the book. “I make it a point to listen to my children. Obviously, as parents, it’s very difficult to hear, but we’re in a world that’s probably heading toward collapse.”

“A Shard of Eternity” by Valérie Tong Cuong

Prisoners of their lives

By practicing tumbling as she does (15-20 hours of training for a few seconds of acrobatics, each more perilous than the last), Leni (13 years old) works with a trainer, Jonah. Another character in the novel, the fourth, and essential. If all are prisoners of a life that they endure, “Jonah, unlike the others, grew up with the idea that any form of attachment is doomed to annihilation and therefore pain.” As usual, Valérie Tong-Cuong has refined the psychology of her protagonists.

Another of his trademarks is the suspense which permeates the story as the situation deteriorates and the roles evolve. “Our balance is very fragile, it would only take a few things for everything to collapse. Each of the characters can lead either to collapse or, on the contrary, to fortification.” Hence the sentence from Hölderlin that she chose as an incipit: “Where danger grows, there also grows that which saves”. “I’ve had a lot of feedback on the fact that my book has a fantastic atmosphere. I really like being told that, and it amuses me, because our first instinct is to see something in it. fantastic because it scares us, while in reality, there is nothing fantastic about nature threatening us.”

Among other questions, Valérie Tong Cuong hopes that Aerobatics arouses, among the most skeptical, the desire to take a step aside. “It is not tomorrow, nor in 5 or 10 years that we must act, it is now”, she insists. She’s right, right?

⇒Aerobatics | Novel | Valerie Tong Cuong | Gallimard, pp., €20.50, digital €15

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EXTRACT

“She won’t have children, that’s a certainty. She won’t put all her energy on studies that will be obsolete before she completes them, on a profession that will have disappeared before she sends her first CV or will be administered by an artificial intelligence She will live what she has to live, take what she can take, escape darkness if not escape fatality, and faster and faster. stronger […]”