“Listen to the Sirens”, by Fabrice Melquiot: with “Suzanne” as muse

In Listen to the sirenscrossing America “at the speed of thought”Fabrice Melquiot makes the sap flow with an inhabited voice, irrigated by the sixty plays, poems and songs of which he is the author. But this whirlwind novel is also an unprecedented efflorescence. Riddled with visions and accidents of conscience, he sculpts the inner projections and sinuosities of Jodie, his 36-year-old narrator, on the road to mourning and renewal. A “memory in motion” made of shards, breaks, the undulations of the dream – those of his childhood, which come back to him to deliver another version of the facts; the memories of others, too, which she tries to make her own.

Questioned by “Le Monde des livres”, the author and director, who is also a performer, creator of pieces for young people, and writes for dance, says he proceeded “by sliding: Listen to the sirens was first a monologue, which had an existence on stage. I came back to it, because the character of Jodie Casterman never left me.” Sonia Déchamps, her editor at Actes Sud, salute this “raw, abundant way of rubbing together emotions and sensations, of bringing Jodie into existence through the unique breath, amplified of her voice, in a breathless romantic monologue, to do battle with the family legend.” Fabrice Melquiot’s first novel is, moreover, Sonia Déchamps’ first as an editor…

It all began, for the author, in 2016, with the reading of an article devoted to Suzanne Verdal, a Canadian dancer who inspired Leonard Cohen (1934-2016) to write the poem Suzanne Takes you Down (1966), then the unforgettable song Suzanne : “I knew several versions, and I found this woman’s words poignant, her trajectory, her fall, her way of staying afloat. I saw this photo of her sitting on the tailgate of her camper van. She recounted the years spent in a Venice Beach parking lot, the lonely walks on the beaches, the shattered dreams; she felt reduced to this song, which she seemed to love and curse at the same time. »

From there emerges the character of Jodie’s mother, “old girl indifferent to everything”who lives “a so-called bohemian life in a pseudo-caravan in a pseudo-parking lot”. The novel captures the essence of Suzanne obliquely, through Jodie’s interior monologue which unfolds into visions, dialogues at loggerheads. Just before his death, his adoptive father reveals a secret to him and deconstructs the family mythology. Jodie, “patched doll”then launches into an investigation into herself.

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