Lize Spit does not do science fiction, but she has a flair for tackling themes that are about to upset the order of the world. His first novel, Debacle, carried the pain, but also the emancipatory force of speech, a year before the #MeToo movement. Released in its original version at a time when the pandemic was causing an increase in mental health problems, his second novel makes an intrusion into bipolar disorder.
For the occasion, we meet Léo, narrator of the story and in love with Simon. Their life, marked by many difficult trials, led them towards each other, to form a bubble where love, tender and shared, translates a certain codependency: “We were two askew pillars who, from then on leaning against each other, would have more stability than a single vertical pillar. Everything would be fine as long as we stayed together. »
Their relationship, 11 years old, changes when Simon, on a whim, gives up his job as a graphic designer to start his own business designing tattoos. Every day a little more, he changes, combining a state of strange exaltation, unprecedented confidence in his abilities, ever more numerous tics and growing paranoia.
Isolated and upset by her lover’s sudden metamorphosis, Leo doubts herself. Methodically at first, then obsessively, she began to record her observations, trying to confirm that she was not making anything up: “I noted in detail how Simon’s behavior had changed. It did me good to compile all this, to see it irrefutably written in black and white. »
Leo, alas, had it all true, and the rest of the story is bogged down in tragedy. With empathetic and rigorous meticulousness, Lize Spit describes the terrifying cycles of bipolarity: the violent drifts of psychosis, the insecure corridors of the psychiatric ward, the agonizing return home, the dwindling of professional resources and the recourse routine to medication.
The disorder is portrayed with such acuity that it makes many documentaries on the subject pale, but its form never puts off, camped in empathy, borrowing in turn the voices of distress and hope. The character of Leo is of a touching and impressive complexity, she who, suffering from the disease, is forced to juggle sometimes contradictory roles – lover, victim and caregiver – while swimming in the urgency of the situation. “It wasn’t just Simon who slipped through my fingers, I also lost all grip on myself, unable to know which Leo I was supposed to be. »
With this chiseled monument of intranquillity, Lize Spit confirms her immense talent. The tragic strength of its characters, the infernal mechanics of its narrative and the breath of its narration hold us to the edge of this abyss which swallows the protagonists, exercising a painful fascination over us.