Literary chronicle by Jean-Rémi Barland. Hélène Gaudy, signs with “Archipels” still in the running for the Goncourt 2024, a moving novel in the form of a tribute to her father

«On the borders of Louisiana, an island bears my father’s first name. Every day it sinks a little deeper under the water. I learned, at the same time as its existence, that it was preparing to disappear.» Thus begins the novel in the form of intimate geography entitled “ Archipelagos » which Hélène Gaudy devotes to her father offering him here the hope of an unsinkable place.

With “Archipels” Hélène Gaudy offers a novel in the form of intimate geography. (Photo Jean-Rémi Barland)

A text of poetic writing of great beauty, where the act of contemplation is privileged rather than action, this novel takes the reader by the hand and the heart to offer them a journey filled with love of value. things that remain essential to better understand your neighbor. “ In this novel, explains the author, I wanted to make the voice of my father heard, archivist of the lives of others, a child marked by war, a committed and secret artist, a man I knew so poorly who claimed to have no memories despite his thousand lives.» As we discover « Archipelagos » (Hélène Gaudy is very keen on this plural responsible for signaling the multiplicity of stories about the same place), does not so much paint the portrait of a man but presents itself as an investigation into this mystery of proximity with a complex being.

«This novel that I constructed by doing assembly work where all the poems presented are from the handwriting of my father is based on real facts », confides the author. “ The father described is the one I learned to see gradually», she adds, very moved. We then dive into the heart of this distant island in Louisiana called Jean-Charles, but also in Chartes, , the Resistance maquis crossed by the grandfather cremated in , and the grandmother, also a fervent communist activist. , or even Italy at the time of fascism, Oran during the Algerian war, and this workshop presented as “ a time capsule before time has even passed “. Workshop where his father stored works.

“Every family is an island”

With its host of objects -« My father spent his life making things », specifies Hélène Gaudy- since the novel offers them a prominent place in this story constructed in four moments presented without concrete dialogues. “Each family is an island, an ecosystem, enriched or disturbed by invasive species, an island whose depths lie at the bottom of the water », writes Hélène Gaudy whose style is often similar to that of Antonio Tabucchi and that of Erri De Luca. Way of signaling the dreamlike force of this text where we are told: “Fear infiltrates dreams, it takes the form of places, of the men who pass through them, of their interchangeable faces, of their numerous silhouettes which always appear at the moment when we thought we were saved. » This father, whose real first name was Jean Karl (Jean the reformist Karl, the revolutionary) and who died in 2005, is part of the heart of each reader (because the author makes it endearing) in a vast movement of empathy.

Some famous films.

Novel about mourning, and memory, “ Archipelagos » specifies that parents are described as megaliths in their children’s field of vision. “ We spend our youth trying to see the landscape that they hide from us, and then, one day, they become very small stones, pebbles. Only there can you take them in your hand, touch their texture and their flaws. Regretting not having done it sooner, when they were huge, when everything was still in front of them. The landscape suddenly seems very empty. They didn’t hide them, they inhabited it. Now, they are the ones we would like to seize, find again », we can read on page 66. Images are found in abundance in the novel, even those that the memory of childhood creates although they never existed. Images from famous films also like “The great escape» avec Steve Mc Queen, « Last year in Marienbad» with Delphine Seyrig and Giorgio Albertazzi, whose father kept an indelible memory, without forgetting “ Pierrot the Fool » a pretext for the couple who are looking at it here, to dream, as is the wish of Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina) and Ferdinand Griffon known as “Pierrot”, (Jean-Paul Belmondo) “ to throw away all your previous life “. With multiple entrances “ Archipelagos » is a magnificent text where the strength of silences stands out implicitly.

Jean-Rémi BARLAND

“Archipels by Hélène Gaudy – Éditions de l’Olivier -286 pages- €21

Destimed Archipelago

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