“If we are condemned to being a repetition of what preceded us, we are screwed” – Marie Laberge

Best-selling author Marie Laberge has long been afraid of losing her concentration once she turns sixty, she spoke to Marie-Claude Barrette during the most recent episode of the podcast. Open your game.

The 74-year-old novelist, who published her 16^e novel last fall, told the host that today, more than ever, nothing could stop him from writing, not even illness or a fall down the stairs.

“I already came down the stairs in the morning before going to write the trilogy [Le goût du bonheur]. I went and got myself a bag of peas, I sat on them and I continued to write,” she said with a laugh, considering herself blessed to be getting older, to have her wits about her and to have her wits about her. ‘still have social interactions.

“I sometimes feel afraid, very anxious about the world I am creating. […] Like I was embarrassed by what I was writing. […] But for me, I have to write everything down, even if it means discovering that I am violent or not fine,” she added.

The playwright also revealed during the episode that she always had a conflicted relationship with her mother, which caused her to grow up quickly during her childhood.

“I think she did what she could, and for her, it wasn’t much. […] I am a very maternal person. She needed the mother in me. I wasn’t really a very little girl. I was a big girl very early,” she said, indicating that she always felt sad for her mother when she thought of her.

The author also mentioned to the host that she had tried to follow her own path, without letting herself be consumed by her shortcomings or bitterness.

“We create our life, we build it. If we are condemned to being a repetition of what came before us, we are screwed. And the whole world is. There is a way to improve the picture a little,” she said, affirming that she had to distance herself from her mother, while offering her presence in other ways, notably through writing letters.

Divorced without getting married

Marie Laberge admitted on her own that her conception of the couple was a little shaky.

“I’m a very, very grounded single person,” she said, indicating that she liked to isolate herself overseas to write, sometimes for many months.

“I lived with someone once, and then it was over. I keep my apartment. I have an extremely protective concept of my freedoms. I am still capable of being in a relationship, but it is very demanding for a spouse,” she said.

Marie Laberge also told Marie-Claude Barrette that she considered her former relationships to be marriages and that she had remained in contact with several of her ex-spouses.

“I have four marriages that I have ended or that have been ended for me. When you end a relationship, you are always at odds,” she continued.

“Sometimes, in marital love, there are replacements for all kinds of lacks from the life before. And when we leave, we know that these deficiencies will reappear and will make you suffer as a person.”

Marie Laberge is celebrating 50 years in the business this year. She published her 16^e roman, Ten dayslast October, in which she addresses love, but also death and medical assistance in dying.