The possibility of a life. Le Seuil announced, for this spring, The collapse, where Édouard Louis would deal with his older brother, who died of alcohol at age 38. We will still have to wait until the fall for this book, another having replaced it, urgently, in a certain way. The young writer (born in 1992) was in fact working on two texts at the same time, and this is the second, Monique escapeswhich imposed itself on him. “This book is in a way an order from my mother”, he confides. So here, after Fights and metamorphoses of a woman (Seuil, 2021), the continuation of the adventures of Monique Bellegueule, mother of Eddy who became Édouard Louis. Which, for his family, did not go without saying. Her mother, in particular, had a very bad experience with her first book, Put an end to Eddy Bellegueule (Seuil, 2014) − which achieved phenomenal success −, perceived as a settling of scores, the display of poverty that she considered exaggerated. For the son, on the other hand, everything was strictly authentic. She understood it later.
We had left Monique living in Paris, living with the caretaker of a building in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and even smoking cigarettes with Catherine Deneuve! Seven years later, unfortunately, the new companion, with whom she had entered into a civil partnership, turns out to be a drunkard, rude, violent, homophobic… Like her first husband, Eddy/Édouard’s father. The mother, 55 years old at the time, then called for help from her son, who had just celebrated his 28th birthday and was in Athens for a writer’s residency. Understanding the emergency, he organizes and pays for everything, and helps her from a distance, with the support of his closest friends, to achieve a real feat: leaving his torturer and moving to the small village in the North. where his daughter Clara lives, with whom Édouard reconciles for the occasion. She too had experienced her brother’s account of their sad family life very badly. For the first time, enjoying well-deserved happiness, Monique will have her own little house (rented), be in her family furniture, alone with her little dog Pocket, without a husband or children to take care of. Free, finally.
Telling this story, going back in time (“I became my mother’s archaeologist”says Édouard Louis), the author gives us a sunny, almost serene story: as proof, the moving episode of their expedition to Hamburg to attend the premiere of the play that a German director took from Fights and metamorphoses of a woman. At the end, Monique, intimidated but radiant, takes the stage and receives a triumphant standing ovation. For the first time, she took a plane, went to the theater, met artists and bourgeois people, entered the world that her son had built for himself. Upset, ashamed of having been ashamed of his loved ones, of his family, and still suffering from his childhood. But, as he explains at one point, “no suffering in my childhood = no books published = no money = no freedom possible”. Those who do not appreciate the work of Édouard Louis will believe that he is still exploiting the same vein. Those who love it and follow it since its beginnings will note the calm tone, the formal and stylistic mastery of the text, and are already waiting The collapse.
Edward Louis
Monique escapes
Threshold
Edition: 50,000 EX.
Price: €18; 180 p.
ISBN: 9782021483468
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