The characters in Marie-Sarah Bouchard’s short stories all have one thing in common: they seek elsewhere a form of redemption, an escape from a life that sticks badly to their skin.

This elsewhere, moving, takes several forms: this trip that we decide to make to make ourselves interesting in the eyes of our comrades (but above all, of ourselves); that lost girl to find, obsessively; that country dream that’s crumbling to shreds; this apartment from which we no longer leave, to protect ourselves from a past that we prefer to obliterate, but which comes back to haunt us; this post-motherhood performance dream that takes on nightmarish hues.

The one who signs with No need to say goodbye her first collection of short stories knows how to capture the fleetingness of these fragmented lives, interrupted in their momentum by a malaise that eats away, an indifference that spreads, a quest that empties its meaning. And this, with a lively writing, tinged with gentle irony, anchored in its time. Through the tape, Marie-Sarah Bouchard addresses topics that resonate in this world of ours: the race for performance, social anxiety, love disorders, sleep disorders, mental workload, social networks and their pernicious side… And by deciding to abandon everything to better flee, to turn away without looking back, these imperfect but endearing characters, even moving with their quirks, seem to tell us: we can always choose not to let ourselves be swallowed up .