Guest of Thibaut Gauthier in “Le Figaro La Nuit”, the novelist returned to the beginnings of his relationship with the presenter of “It begins today”.
After personalities like Jean-Michel Blanquer, Marc Lavoine and Nelson Monfort, it was the turn of Maxime Chattam to answer questions from journalist Thibaut Gauthier this Wednesday evening on Figaro TV. Throughout “Figaro La Nuit”, in which he presented his latest book Prime Timethe writer remembered his meeting with the host Faustine Bollaert whom he married in 2012.
“We met because I was writing a historical thriller, and it was the first time I wrote a book in which the hero had my middle name,” he begins. “I wanted to assume that the hero was a novelist, that he would, in certain respects, resemble me. I wanted the woman in front of him, with whom he falls in love, to have a very strong first name, which says a lot of things. And I couldn’t find it.”
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It was by chance, when he turned on the radio in his car, that Maxime Chattam found this first name. “I hear “Presented by Faustine Bollaert”. Faustina. Faustina! The name is great”relates the writer. “Plus it works, a thriller in 1900 in Paris. I tell myself that it's okay, her name will be Faustine. I wrote the book, I told the story to my press officer who told me – it was the moment when I had stopped promoting the book – “I know you don't want to leave the house anymore, but the The girl you told me about wants to have you on her radio show!”
Amused, the author of the saga Otherworld accepts the presenter's invitation, and even tells the anecdote to Faustine Bollaert during their meeting. “She looks at me and I see in her eyes that she is wondering “But is this guy hitting on me or what?””says Maxime Chattam with a laugh. “But it was true, the story was true… I was flirting with her too, but she inspired the first name of my heroine.”
She imbued a lot of things with her person and her vision of life that have made me change today.
Maxime Chattam about his wife, Faustine Bollaert.
When the journalist Thibaut Gauthier asks him if “love changes the way of writing”, Maxime Chattam responds frankly. “Love, I’m not sure. On the other hand, the relationship with a woman, yes, certainly. Beyond that, family changes a man. analyzes the one who is now the parent of two children with Faustine Bollart. “Time changes a writer, I could have been single for the last twenty, thirty years, I would still have changed.”
The novelist evokes his wife again. “Obviously, she imbued her person and her vision of life with a lot of things that have made me change today. So who made my writing change”he delivers. To close his remarks, he salutes the work of Faustine Bollaert on Prime Timea work based on the world of television which is – of course – familiar to him. “I need absolute confidence to give my text to read while writing”confides the novelist. “It had to be my wife.”
