With his novel Madelaine before dawn (Lattès), the author succeeds Neige Sinno on the list of winners of this very prescriptive literary award.
Goncourt left it aside, the Goncourt of high school students has just crowned it. At 1:03 p.m., the delegated high school students chose to crown, from the town hall of Rennes, cradle of the Prize, Sandrine Collette for her novel Madelaine before dawnpublished by Lattès. A cruel and rebellious tale, with a feminist tone.
Each year, after two months of diligent reading of the 14 novels in the running, from the first Goncourt selection, the high school students delegates from each region deliberate behind closed doors to establish a short list, among which the winner is included. Sandrine Collette faced Rebecca Lighieri, Thibault de Montaigu, Olivier Norek and Abdellah Taïa.
Already winner of the Closerie des Lilas prize, RTL-Lire Grand Prix for And always the forests (2020), the Giono prize and the Renaudot des lycéens for We were wolves (2022), Sandrine Collette asserts a little more with this award, a critical and public success (50,000 copies of Madelaine before dawn). It is therefore a consecration for the author, but also a relief for the publishing house which had until then obtained no major literary prize.
“A perfectly mastered story”
For eleven years, at the crazy pace of one novel per year or so, Sandrine Collette has published a novel. His little eleventh therefore aroused the enthusiasm of the high school students. Its story: in a miserable and depopulated hamlet, where famine hollows people's stomachs, live Rose, a lonely old woman, Ambre and Aelis, twins, and their respective husbands, the first being strong and courageous, the second, an alcoholic. The two sisters, inseparable, live a few meters from each other. Aelis had three boys. Amber, none. But soon everything will change.
An abandoned little girl appears. Amber becomes his mother. Intrepid, fierce, stubborn and tender at the same time, Madelaine disrupts the daily life of her new family, dependent on a land that does not belong to them. The Ambrosias, their terrible masters, are the owners. They ask for their share and sometimes much more than that… So, we will have to make a choice: obey or revolt.
Here we find with this dark tale, with the accents of a feminist Little Red Riding Hood, themes dear to the author: a wild nature like men, violence and the harshness of existence. But also a marked taste for turning things around. So who is the narrator speaking? In its August 29 issue, Le Figaro littéraire wrote: “The novelist masters her story perfectly and, from the first pages, we know that a tragedy has taken place, but what is it? This question never leaves us and only accentuates the tension that weighs on these pages. The threat is there, even discreet it makes noise. And the gentleness of a mother's arms, the laughter of children, the tender gaze of a man placed on a beloved woman, will never be able to stop the course of things: the injustice of nature, the cruelty of men will always have the last word. »
With this Goncourt prize for high school students, created by the Ministry of National Education and Youth and Fnac, under the patronage of the Académie Goncourt, the 54-year-old author who shares her life as an author between writing and his horses in the Morvan, succeeds Neige Sinno and his powerful sad tiger(POL). She joins a nice list of authors, among them: Clara Dupont-Monod, Karine Tuil, David Diop, Gaël Faye, Delphine de Vigan, David Foenkinos, Sorj Chalandon, Philippe Claudel…
