Almost as if it were obvious. On November 23, when the jurors of the Goncourt prize for high school students announced the name of their 2023 winner, no voice was raised to criticize their choice. A few weeks earlier, Neige Sinno and his sad tiger (P·O·L) had received the Femina, but also the literary prize of World and that of Inrockuptibles. Neither a simple testimony on the incest of which the author was a victim nor a distant analysis on the question of sexual violence inflicted on children, but an unprecedented reflection on the subject mixing experience, literary references and documents, the work shakes up, suffocates, questions. Sold more than 80,000 copies between its release in mid-August and the end of November according to Edistat, the book is also a commercial success.
Very quickly, Neige Sinno perceives the ambivalence of the media-literary whirlwind in which she is immersed. She, who had already published a collection of short stories and a novel that went relatively unnoticed, became famous with what remains an intimate and painful drama. “Even though I am resilient, experiencing this success of my book, which makes me very happy, in my solitude, makes me think all the time about the life I could have had if I had not experienced this” , she says in Release on November 20.
Is it the era that wants this, more fond of works echoing the upheavals of society than of literature? She is not the only one to have experienced, in recent years, a brutal collision between the satisfaction of seeing an important subject brought to the forefront, the joy of being recognized for her writings and the heartbreak of having drawn from a source made of tears and suffering. Virginie Despentes with Fuck me and Christine Angot with Incest were the pioneers. But the phenomenon is growing in 2020 with The consent by Vanessa Springora (Grasset), on the influence experienced with Gabriel Matzneff at 14 years old, sold more than 200,000 copies in large format. Then, the following year, with The big family by Camille Kouchner (Seuil) and its more than 300,000 copies.
“Making art with my story disgusts me,” writes Neige Sinno
Beyond #MeToo, other personal stories have seen considerable success. Among the most remarkable in both form and content, going beyond simple testimony to access literature, The Lambeau by Philippe Lançon (Gallimard, more than 400,000 copies), account of the months which followed the attack against Charlie Hebdo of which the journalist was a victim, and Live fast (Flammarion) by Brigitte Giraud, in which she questions the notion of destiny after the death of her husband in a motorcycle accident. Prix Goncourt 2022, she received her award with “pure joy, because nothing had been done or thought for such a prize to go to the book; receiving the Goncourt confirmed to me that this crazy enterprise of questioning destiny made sense and could speak to everyone. But, she immediately adds, “I couldn’t really rejoice: this book exists because a man died.”
In his text itself, Neige Sinno questions at length the role of literature with regard to a dramatic personal story. Without doubt she is the one who, from the writing of Sad tiger, pushes the thinking further. “Making art with my story disgusts me,” she writes. A little further on, she asks: “Creating beauty with horror, isn’t that simply making horror?” Then: “What is desirable then? Nothing, that’s precisely the problem. I haven’t found a solution to talk about that.” So, she struggles with her testimony, which only has meaning if it becomes “something transmissible”, with her writing which takes her reader “into her head” and not “into her story”, with a price to pay – “betray what[elle a] lived” – while knowing that “literature [l]”did not save”, but which, perhaps, by its existence and its success, sad tiger will “protect others”.
Making a personal story a collective work is what allows you to tackle the wave of success without sinking. Adelaide Bon, who, raped as a child, wrote The Little Girl on the ice floe (Grasset, 25,000 copies), experienced it and conceived it as follows: “It was not a therapeutic book. I had done therapy beforehand. It was a book that I wanted to be political, I I wrote for my ice sisters, it was the book that I didn’t have and that I wanted them to find.” A desire shared by Brigitte Giraud even if she distinguishes herself from others by not considering herself a “victim”: “Writing has nothing to do with therapy, the very idea disgusts me. Working on the form, the sentence, the rhythm, the texture moves reality, transforms it, brings out something invisible. I have sometimes been told that this book is an intimate book, but, even if it is indeed very personal, it leads me to collective truths.” And to evoke the era, technology, globalization, liberalism, but also sociological truths, such as that of class defector, and historical truths such as the Algerian war and exile.
Good distance and literary questions
The years that elapsed between the event and the publication of the book – more than twenty years in the case of Brigitte Giraud, and twenty-three since the nine-year prison sentence of Neige Sinno’s father-in-law -, the work of reflection, writing, sometimes investigating to understand what happened, the desire to protect loved ones establishes a protective distance. “To write and publish this book, I needed to come out of the chaos and regain full energy that would allow me to regain control. I waited until I was at the right distance to be only in the writing, and I mainly asked myself literary questions”, continues Brigitte Giraud. Like the latter, Adelaïde Bon has never had the feeling of putting her private life in the public arena: “The book is not my story, but the one that my attacker took me into. I wouldn’t tell you the same thing if I had to tell you about my current intimate life, which belongs to me.”
Despite all the protections erected, this distance is struck, shaken even by meetings or messages from readers who are living or have had similar experiences. By asking for advice, giving thanks or simply testifying about their lives, they constantly bring the author back to his personal story. Responding to it is often experienced as an ardent obligation – and a way of making one’s drama useful to others – but can become burdensome. Adélaïde Bon was trained to collect the words of victims, but she received more than 1,000 letters, and one evening, while she was shopping at her neighborhood convenience store, a victim approached her: “I I was with my child, in the ravioli aisle, and panic invaded me. It was not the place, I was going to take badly to this word which deserved better…”
Very quickly, the authors feel reduced to this single personal drama, while they aspire to a different future. Camille Kouchner has chosen to no longer speak in the media. Vanessa Springora accompanied the release of the film inspired by Consent, but now finishes another work and judges that she has spoken enough. Adelaide Bon lived for a time being known only as “the little girl on the ice floe” – “it was all the stranger since, for years, I had concentrated all my intelligence on remaining silent on this history”. Writing a book with the ecologist Sandrine Rousseau allowed her to open another page. Neige Sinno says it, she fears this trap, but, if the pressure becomes too strong, she knows she has a refuge far from the noise, Mexico, where she lives.
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