Since the publication of his first novel, Dig up the bonesin 2016, which tackled the delicate subject of eating disorders, then with in particular Natural light red and MukbangFanie Demeule stood out for her unique literary voice, questioning with her uniqueness the relationship to the body, to identity and to reality.
Posted at 5:30 p.m.
The one who also works as an editor at Tête première and Hamac editions, in addition to being a lecturer in literature at UQAM, offers us a very first collection of short stories, a veritable string of little pearls that we swallow one after the other with fascination, all narrated by a female voice. First published in various collections or literary reviews, the 15 short stories – some of which have been reworked – delve into themes dear to the author: auscultation of unhealthy and strange obsessions (The jet, Anamorphosis), shame and pain that suck to the bone, until transmutation (reptilian, I am Nancy Spungen).
“I like to think that turning to the shadows is my way of embellishing our fatal race. In truth, I selfishly want my writings to endure. Become my ghosts”, will say the narrator of trouble party.
Death, moreover, is omnipresent in I’m the one who wants to save her skinseveral stories featuring ghosts, spirits that continue to wander among the living, blurring the contours of reality (Alloy, Basementpoetics On the foreshorethe beautifully morbid Relics). Demeule’s writing, both frontal and evanescent, grabs us and slips under our skin, like the snake on the cover, bewitching and disturbing.
I’m the one who wants to save her skin
Fanie Demeule
Hammock
176 pages