It is a powerful book, from the family of texts by Jim Harrison which explores the links that Man maintains with Nature. Questioning the order of things, probing the instinct for revolt, Sandrine Collette immerses us with “ Madelaine before dawn » in a story of rather unhappy families which, as Tolstoy noted in the incipit of Anna Karenina, are in this case each in their own way.
We find ourselves in a place sheltered from time. A tiny hamlet called “ The Climbs », where old Rose struggles to survive, and the twins Ambre and Aelis bustle around their husbands Eugène, the forestry stevedore and Léon, the clog maker who only thinks about drinking. The earth quivering under their heavy footsteps, which does not belong to them and where they work tirelessly, remains stubbornly miserly. The man and the horse go side by side and each hastens. of this almost hypnotic slowness of large bodies exhausted after a day of work. »
Aelis' three boys are not lazy either, energy being their trademark. This is where one day Madelaine appears, a hungry and wild little girl from the forests, who, lost in a barn, is discovered by Rose. Adopted by Les Montées, it delights its inhabitants with its courage, and its propensity to twist the blow of disastrous reality. Intrepid, defying all prohibitions, taken in mainly by Ambre who makes her her daughter at heart, she who was unable to have children, Madelaine embodies a sort of emblem of the women's revolt, a spark, a song of hope. Without precise spatio-temporal markers, “Madelaine before dawn» whose action can be placed a little before the French Revolution is flamboyantly inscribed in the work of Sandrine Collette whose writing is often reminiscent of that of Jean Giono. Let us also remember that his previous novel “ We were wolves » won the Giono Prize in 2022, at the same time as the Renaudot prize for high school students.
The place of girls and family
« This book » explains Sandrine Collette took me three years to write, after having taken four to five months to imagine the plot which is based on real events. “ Madelaine before dawn » is an undisguised tribute to these women who decided in October 1789 to march on Versailles. Their action undoubtedly foreshadows the arrival of a new dawn. “ I am very keen that my novel be perceived as a literary way of speaking about the place of girls and the family, saluting it in all that it can bring, of honoring the refusal to give up whatever it happens, magnifying the unconditional love that saves and elevates humans, and extending the narrative to the relationship we have with animals “, explains the novelist.
Developing the idea that it is the small stories that make the big one, inscribing to show it the destinies of dozens of characters in a succession of pantheistic descriptions, (we will remember among others the moving figure of Bran who old on Rose, or of Eugène who rebels against the idea of working the land), Sandrine Collette signs a novel of love, pain and obstinacy, where it is shown that we are contaminated by the nature in which we live. This nature, and this is one of the positives of the book, often shapes us in positive ways.
“Fear stops us from acting”
This feminist novel which does not impose itself as a pamphlet against men (although they too often bow down) and which is intended to be filled with anger and tenderness, shows us, as Sandrine Collette explains, that “ it's fear that stops us from acting, and that we can overcome thanks to the people who help us. » Intergenerational solidarity being one of the driving forces behind this larger-than-life fiction. Living from her profession as a writer in a village of 250 inhabitants and 4,000 cows, making this isolated existence which, she says, “fits very well», the breeding ground of her dreams and her stories, this atypical and sincere author offers us with “ Madelaine before dawn » a poignant story with multiple entries whose last word is “laughter” where it is affirmed that a simple flame in the hearts and eyes of honest people “ will (perhaps) one day burn the world.”
Jean-Rémi BARLAND
“Madelaine before dawn” by Sandrine Collette – from Lattès – 248 pages – €20.90
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