The death of journalist and novelist Claire Gallois

Claire Gallois, who died on Monday November 18 at the age of 87, had a rare quality, which, in itself, deserves to be paid tribute to: she was not a hypocrite. This obviously caused her some setbacks, which she handled with a certain panache. She perhaps got this from her childhood, from her rebellion against a family and a social environment that had rejected her.

As she recounted in a delicate and moving autobiographical novel, And if you didn't exist (Stock, 2017), Claire Renard, who would become Claire Gallois, was born on October 8, 1937 in Boulogne-Billancourt. Until the age of 6, she was in foster care in Creuse. Very happy, with Yaya, whom she considered her mother. One day they came to pick her up and take her back to Paris, to a bourgeois apartment that she didn't like and where she wasn't loved. Added to this heartbreak was schooling – of which she spoke with vengeful humor – at the Catholic boarding school Notre-Dame “les Oiseaux”, in Verneuil-sur-Seine (today in Yvelines), before she returned in Paris, at the Lycée Molière.

Very quickly, she wanted her job to be “read and write”. So, journalism, the novel, publishing. For the first, chronicles in Paris-Match, Elle, Marie-Claire, Le Figaro, The Point. For the second, a first novel in 1965, To my only desire (Buchet-Chastel). About fifteen followed, including The Man of Trouble (Grasset, 1989), around the figure of the critic and writer Matthieu Galey (1934-1986), to whom she was closely linked. With the third way, publishing, it ended badly. Albin Michel fired Claire Gallois in 1997. The following year, she took revenge by publishing The Honor of the Unemployed (Denoël), for which she pays the royalties to the association Agir ensemble contre le emploi.

“Always spontaneous”

This interest in the deprived, the neglected, this solidarity towards them, we find in his very last novel Alias (Flammarion, 2021). Alias ​​is the name of an abused little boy. To write about these children who “do not know how to take revenge for the insult that the world does them”Claire Gallois had carried out a careful investigation into child protection and its failings. As for his chronicles of Pointwhere his irony often hit the mark, they were brought together in Me president (Stock, 2014).

Claire Gallois was able to exercise this irony for forty years on the Femina jury, where she joined in 1984 and of which she was president – ​​the function is rotating and annual – in 2004, the centenary year of the creation of the prize . Christine Jordis, who served on the jury with her for a long time, describes Claire Gallois as “always spontaneous, having retained a freshness that adults often lose, not refusing provocation which could lead to outbursts and saying bluntly what she thought, which sometimes caused her some inconvenience. Her friend Matthieu Galey said that she was interested in others whoever they were – which was not her case. »

“At the Femina jury, at a certain time, adds Christine Jordis, there were two opposing camps. Some were especially sensitive to the literary value of the novels, to the style. The others were more interested in storytelling, supported more accessible literature and judged the opposite camp too elitist. Claire Gallois was one of them and the debates between the two groups were often lively. But it was a very pleasant period, there was real competition. And Claire's choices and words were always surprising. »

“His opinions, his convictions, his literary passions will be greatly missed by the jury,” Femina said in a press release on November 20. She was certainly the most fanciful of the jurors. And a reader without prejudice.