The Delicious | The Press

The title of this column could have been the title of my friend Marie-Pierre Duval’s book. Instead, she chose In the land of quiet despair. The book is a great success. Semi-autobiographical novel.

Delicious with a capital D?

It’s all that makes life worth living. The laughter, the friends, the love, the time spent doing nothing, the time spent just feeling the wind on your face…

Le Délicieux, too, who flees from us, observes the one we call Mapi, in our little band: “None of these splendors can now reach me. Countered in a tight game plan, life is no longer limited to the pragmatism of what to do. And there are so many. »

Our mothers lived through the first post-liberation era of women, post-Quiet Revolution. Marie-Pierre, in theory, is of this generation for whom the sky should be the limit, being in the century where girls can do everything, have everything, be astronauts, CEOs or surgeons, because after all, the era distributes its merit-based fruit…

That’s not how she feels. She rather feels a form of permanent alienation.

And the novel basically revolves around a question: why don’t I feel SO free? It’s a novel about the illusion of freedom in our lives.

She recounts her arrival at McGill in 1995, after the NO vote in the referendum, after the end of a certain social project: “We were from Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Alberta or even Saint-Bruno, but each morning we deposited our identities on the threshold of the stone gate of Sherbrooke Street to adopt a new country: success. »

And success, she has. This is the social project of the time: to succeed. Curious about everything, Marie-Pierre became a television researcher, swelling the ranks of women who formed the backbone of the entire structure of Quebec television. She is given responsibilities, everything is “good”, she lands in successful shows.

But there is a void. What is all this for? Why am I doing this, why am I running all the time, why am I never having time for anything (or almost), time to taste, to smell, to feel, to enjoy, to love, to appreciate? Page 141: “In front of the mirror, only one world remains, that of an unhappy woman for no apparent reason. »

The job, the child, the lover. No great misfortune…

And yet, no great happiness either, the impression of missing something, of never being up to it. I’ve heard this story and its variants a thousand times over the years from those around me – especially women. My friend Mapi is all those women who have too much on their shoulders, on whom society puts too much on their shoulders… And who put too much on their shoulders themselves.

She is going to run with her friend Caro, so as not to crack (she will end up breaking anyway): “Steal an hour from the big game plan to run, to run away from all those who have something to ask us, clinging to our ankles. The Petit, the Lover, the Producer, the Animator, the hockey coach, the Petit’s teacher and all the others who are waiting for an answer, an email, a file, day, night, weekdays and weekends -end…”

It is the story of a free woman, of a generation of women freer than those of their mothers, their grandmothers…

And who are, however, still, imprisoned. Maybe not so free after all. In this race for success, in this quest for very feminine perfection, wonders my friend, the Delicious, where is he?

Well, the Delicious, it is further and further away and increasingly absent, because “today there is so much to feel that even the present moment can no longer compete”.

Page 89: “She [son amie Caro] and I come from the same place. A place where the surrounding air was full of ambition. Sensitive and porous little girls have become hyper-performing women, in accordance with the social project. Effective. Everywhere. All the time. Until forgetting to be well. »

Mapi told me after publication that she wanted men to read her book. She hopes it will start a conversation. I have my doubts about it: in my social networks, every day I see women who praise In the land of quiet despairsince one month…

No guys.

Maybe we read less. Maybe my sample is flawed. Or maybe we’re just more afraid, guys, of plunging into ourselves, like Marie-Pierre plunges into her fears.

You have to be strong to face these monsters, buried in you.

In our little band, we had known for years that our friend was working on this book and that she was logging every word. We knew it was from his burnout, of his burns related to his jobs in the wonderful world of French-Canadian television. We thought it would be a novel with keys on the “fine steps” of the middle…

Then the UFO came out. It’s not what we expected. It’s not a book about TV, it’s a book about a woman trapped in a thousand productivist diktats, who was taught the joys of productivity…

But to whom nothing has been said about happiness.

What portion of GDP is built, asks my friend, on the feeling of not being enough?

I was haunted by this question…

I postulate that the more the GDP of a society grows, the more there is a risk that the Delicious will shrink in the lives of citizens.

I read your book, Mapi, and I have two things to tell you…

One, you lifted the veil on large swaths of the lives of women of my generation about whom I was unaware of so many things, including many of your torments. You put into words this somewhat vague feeling that I have always had: life, even in our peaceful tropics, is harder for women than for us guys. Or else, otherwise harsh. God you have it on your shoulders…

And God you care, too.

Two, you lifted the veil on you, whom I thought I had known well for 15 years… Who I don’t know that well, after all. I don’t know if it’s due to my own turpitude or to the – infinite – power of literature, of your literature.

Maybe you never know people’s lives so well until they make a fiction out of it…

And yours is delicious.

In the land of quiet despair

Marie Pierre Duval

Stanke

304 pages