Your promise
by Camille Laurens
Gallimard, 361 p., 22,50 €
They love each other. Of crazy love. For months, they lived only for this devouring passion, this complete, exclusive, flamboyant desire. How to explain the shipwreck? They had everything to be happy. Until making a promise.
Claire Lancel is a novelist. She promised not to make her companion appear in the pages of a future book. Gilles Fabian has pledged not to betray her. Commitments not kept. But weren’t they illusory? It is in court that Claire explains herself, and weaves the story of this lost love. She is accused of having wanted her lover dead. She knows that she was heading into tragedy, quoting Heraclitus: “He who seeks truth must be prepared for the unexpected, for it is difficult to find and, when encountered, disconcerting. »
Life is not a fairy tale
The game of desire, of seduction, of discovery first: “We told each other about our lives like a novel we read the day before, marveling at the similarities, the differences, the coincidences. Well, especially me. » The idyll establishes itself through the rhythm of the meetings until the acquisition of this vast house in the South, in the shade of the mimosa tree.
And nothing panics Claire: “Life is not a fairy tale (…). It is precisely because I know this that I did not attach importance to what sometimes made the symphony creak. » The worries of Carole, the faithful friend, the isolation of the couple, the attacks of jealousy and the repeated absences, nothing alerts her: “He gave me a new feeling that I was going to be loved for myself, that I could let my guard down. »
He is a puppeteer. He carries out his projects from Paris to Toronto. Devoid of any empathy, he plays his part, too proud to be interested in Claire’s success. He becomes absent, becomes possessive, pulls the strings of an invasive and destructive love. Stunned, Claire still wants to believe it: “I now knew how to avoid conflicts, often at the cost of my natural fantasy. » Little by little, the influence is deployed. Gilles can’t stand Claire’s success, who steps aside to save their love: “How did we get here? I waited for him to look up, to meet the challenge of my gaze. But nothing. I had ceased to exist. »
Love does not obey reason
Relatives are called to the stand, helpless spectators of a predicted tsunami: “Claire remained herself, the one she always was, while Gilles wanted to make her his own. » Everything is said about deadly domination. Before his first name, he adds the possessive: “my Claire”. But beyond the comments, there remains the incomprehensible blindness: “Love does not obey reason or the reasoning of friends, it has its own logic which lives on hope and denial,” writes Camille Laurens.
From novel to novel, the twists and turns of love and intimate secrets are his raw material. Through this fusional and suicidal couple, it is the lively tension of love stories that she explores, the demanding happiness, the toxic relationship to the point of absence of feelings, with a keen sense of observation and a dense, alert writing. Breathtaking fiction, Your promise is also a reflection on writing. What does the quote from William Faulkner summarize: “Literature is not useful for seeing better. It is only used to better measure the thickness of the shadow. »
