Strange and powerful novel here: a book where not much happens, but where a series of small nothings of the daily life of a family finally make up a big whole, funny speaking.
With A window through which to escape, published these days by Quebec America, Madeleine Allard indeed signs a first hard novel, although felt, on the condition of women, and especially a certain “Fury”.
The “Fury”, yes, with a capital F, on top of that, embodies the main character of this little book of less than 150 pages, which is devoured in no time, as the characters are true and the subject is embodied. We bet that many readers will easily recognize themselves.
The story, set in the Rosemont neighborhood of the 1980s, recounts the days of a certain 8-year-old Lucie, who watches in terror as the women around her get carried away by this frightening “Fury”: both her sisters (“cursed ) teenage girls than his terrifying, “Tired Old” grandmother, his mother, especially, before she disappeared altogether. And we will soon understand why.
The novel smacks of lived experience. “It’s all true, it’s all fake,” reads the acknowledgments. And the author, to whom we owe a book on breastfeeding (co-written with host Annie Desrochers) and a collection of short stories (When the body gives in), does not hide it. “Yes, she confirms, met last week at Molson Park, I have three sisters, I experienced this dynamic of girls, and a mother who leaves, indeed, I experienced that. »
Still, the “starting point” is elsewhere, she insists. Rather in the reflection on his generation, and especially on that which preceded it. On the horizons of women her age (she’s 48), in the 1980s, let’s say. “If I had been born 25 years earlier, if I had been part of a different generation, the decision to separate and the impact it would have had would have been completely different. And that’s also what she says, half-wordly, through the emotions of her young Lucie, who decodes this famous “Fury” here and there, constantly anticipating it.
No, this feeling is not necessarily feminine, nuance the author. “But in my book, yes. Because I placed myself in a time when women had fewer options, I think. »
A relatively dangerous “Fury”, it should be noted. “In my book, I don’t go as far as danger, but Lucie is scared and it’s terrible,” confirms Madeleine Allard. When you’re a child and you see your parents in distress, it’s really scary! »
The author hopes that readers will see here a kind of “snapshot of an era” that is certainly gone, but whose certain “disillusions” remain. “The mother is disillusioned, she says, she believed that becoming a mother would be fantastic! But no… “
Note that the novel nevertheless ends gently, and Madeleine Allard was keen on it. “It was important because I find myself tough!” she bursts out laughing. But why am I writing this? Why am I so hard on women? Me, I loved my grandmothers, why do I come up with this terrorizing character (from Tired Old Woman)? »
Maybe her reading (she loves Stephen King) has something to do with it. Still, we won’t tell you everything, only that if the “Fury” does indeed inhabit all of us (and all!) at different times, it can still be controlled. How ? Especially by writing. Well…