when silence changes sides – L’Express

when silence changes sides – LExpress

There is no escape. For every writer, man or woman, the day comes when we write about our relatives, mother, father or even grandparents. In this single return, Frédéric Beigbeder (A man aloneGrasset), Jean-Louis Ezine (The ChairGallimard), Jean-Claude Grumberg (When the Earth was flatThreshold), Sabri Louatah (SafariFlammarion), Vanessa Springora (SurnameGrasset) or even Blandine Rinkel (The RiftStock) yield to this ardent obligation. Just like, brilliantly, Marie Nimier. Twenty years after his brilliant Medici Prize, The Queen of Silence (Gallimard), dedicated to the author of Blue Hussar died in 1962 at the age of 36 at the wheel of her Aston Martin, “face marked by the words of others” for her 5-year-old daughter, the novelist tackles with The Dark Side of the Queen (Mercury of France) to his mother, Nadine, a beautiful blonde, who took up so much space in his life. Of course, when telling Nadine, Marie inevitably returns to her father, whom she most often calls Roger Nimier, not made for marriage or fatherhood, but for “the right to cook, the hoaxes, the bullshit. Fresh flesh . Figures of speech.”

This mother, therefore, with her complaints, her blackmail and her aggressiveness disguised as tenderness, against which Marie never managed to shield herself. At each of the novelist’s Parisian visits to rue Jean-Mermoz, where widow Nadine (separated from her body during the death of the hussar) raised her three children without great means, her mother declared hostilities – while in the neighborhood, we appreciate the courage, humor and generosity of this woman doubles.

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“She is not trying to capture me since I am already captive […]writes the author, “she just wants to regularly administer a little booster shot to me.” This captivity comes from childhood, when little Marie, overwhelmed by love for this providential mother, listens to her in silence, a spectator distraught, Marie Nimier searches her memory and expresses doubts about inappropriate gestures, accentuated fiddling, knows that it happened. something seriousbut what? Then the silence changes sides. We are confused by his quest for absolute sincerity.

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