and suddenly absence arises – L’Express

Clairvoyants, the explosive characters Clair de femme by Romain Gary had warned: “Am I intrusive? Terribly, when you’re not there.” Absence in abundance, omnipresent absence, absence that drives the most balanced beings crazy, what brilliance does it take on when it arises in a family and settles for a time without an announced end? Agnès Laurent, a senior reporter at L’Express, has put her journalistic spirit and sharp pen into what resembles a psychological investigation as much as a novel of manners. She researched extensively to refine the plot and characters of this second book, A beautiful daypublished by Récamier, three years after the publication of his thriller Go back to sleep, everything is fine (Plon).

A chalet clinging to the mountain, a father, a mother, four children – two girls, two boys: no frills, enough to develop a story that surprises. Here are the parents, Claude and Marie Cotraz, determined to take advantage of a beautiful summer day and the maturity of their eldest to set off to attack the capricious high mountain while the house, animals and children remain under the watchful eye of their wise Marie-Pierre. No illusion maintained about cloudless family happiness, no sentimentality, neither in the story nor in the style, clear, striking from the first pages; here, it is a question of realism. The author creates unvarnished characters, the tempestuous father, who shouts and corrects the children with a stick, the silent mother who gets scolded when the coffee is not hot enough, and these noisy, jumping, composed siblings. , in order of birth, of Marie-Pierre, Luc, Paule and the youngest, Jean, babbling and trotting still amazed by what he discovers about life.

The escape that the couple offers rings in the minds of the little ones like a promise of autonomy, a day of freedom enjoying blueberries, the sun… Then, a storm which hits this carefree day. Night falls, fears silenced, annoyance, attempts to play down the drama and the evidence that sneakily becomes apparent: the parents caught up in the mountain, until when? The wait begins and with it, inevitable, the anxiety. Four brothers and sisters forced to grow up without knowing, forced to hope. How do we build ourselves as an individual, adolescent, adult, father and mother, when the fierce desire and with it the hope of one day finding our parents tarnishes everything, starting with fraternal bonds? It is this questioning that Agnès Laurent explores through the destinies of her protagonists, as endearing as they are different, whom we meet for fifty years. The multiple memories, the secrets, the silences… and the lack. So many pitfalls that brothers and sisters will have to tame, each in their own way, some resigned, others rebellious.

Does accepting mean giving up?

We think we are reading the story of siblings but here, without warning, the author leads us with infinite delicacy towards a disturbing reflection on acceptance. Can we live while trying to counteract misfortune? By persisting, as one of the heroes does, for example, in looking for missing parents? Or, a softer version chosen by one of the sisters, by keeping in the hollow of a drawer this scarf that belonged to the vanished mother? Or, by trying to revive memories that memory, little by little, dissolves… Vain and necessary at the same time.

And when finally the wisest would be tempted to rationalize – that is to say, to consider that this mountain will never give them back either their parents or the idealized life before – this question arises: does accepting mean giving up?

From the narration then emerges another dimension, silenced when disappearances, real ones, surface in the news: the consequences for those around them, spouses, children, asked to cohabit with ghosts. A tragedy ricochets on the hearts of those who, around the victims, remain. In A beautiful day, it’s a family meal that goes wrong, the guilt that seizes some, spares others… But we’ll stop there. You must read this novel, a little treatise on life that you close in a hurry and whose successive endings make the reader aware of the need to welcome family and friendly mutual assistance, the beings present as so many reasons to rejoice, even in the middle of chaos.

A beautiful day, by Agnès Laurent. Editions Récamier, 336 p., €20.90.