Diversions | Marie Demers without filter

Marie Demers is returning to autofiction these days. Not half, but totally with both feet. In a novel without filter, certainly immodest, she promises to write what she least wants to say. In doing so, she spares no one and harms many people in the process, starting with… herself.

“Is it true to say that I would have preferred to do the interview with Dominic Tardif? » We haven’t yet sat down to talk about his Misappropriations, published this week by Hurtubise – an “I” story where she tackles head-on and over 300 pages all the small, large and medium-sized “traumas” of her life – that Marie Demers asks the question. It gives you an idea of ​​the character, a spontaneity that is clumsy to say the least. We cannot blame the author of Love disorders and D’In Between its lack of authenticity, let’s say.

It must be said that she thrives on this quest for truth, at the very origin of her autofiction, of which we look in vain for the fiction portion, as she gives so many details on known facts (her mother here, an interview in The Press there, she even returns to an episode of the #AgressionNonDdonné movement where her name was circulated). We will come back to this.

Autofiction or autobiography, then? Once our slight discomfort has dissipated, the author generously answers our questions: “The autobiographical pact implies a search for the truth which I think is impossible,” she says, “but which we can get closer to. »

Hence his proposal, both courageous and kamikaze, which pushes the boundaries of autofiction quite far, thank you, in particular with this choice of not using any fictitious name. You read correctly. And it’s intentional: “I’m putting myself in danger. Why would I protect people who, I believe, have not protected me? “, she said, with yet another confusing statement.

Laying bare

Reading his adventures, whether at his chalet in his childhood, or on a surfing trip in the South, through several romantic relationships as brief as they are tortuous, we end up wondering if that’s not what anime: putting yourself in danger. “Yes,” she concedes, “at the same time, while writing, I have the impression that there was something that was also saving me. »

This is why she lays herself bare, we understand, through this story as endearing as it is disorienting, which begins with her “flaws” (this is the name of the chapter), her “idealized” relationship with her father, and rather conflicted with her mother, the author Dominique Demers (whom she never names, but quotes extensively). “In a novel that talks about yourself, if you don’t talk about your childhood, there is something lost,” she says, knowing that her mother (her father died when she was 21) risk of being “injured”. “I also have a lot of empathy,” she adds, “I feel caring, but I can’t deny our relationship either! »

Narcissistic, a bit, as an exercise, do we dare? “If this were a narcissistic exercise, I would present an ideal vision of myself. However, I did not come out unscathed! “, she answers skillfully.

It is impossible here to ignore his chapter on this toxic professional relationship for which he was publicly criticized a few years ago, in the wake of the #NonDenouncedAggression movement in the literary world. “It’s sad that it seems like a settling of scores,” she said, “but it has no choice but to seem like that. […] I still managed to make myself wrong…” Note that she also asks delicate questions about the limits between misconduct and disagreement, public interest and defamation, a new subject where Marie Demers suspects she risks displeasing, it’s clear. Still: “I would not have found the same truth if I had changed the names,” she insists.

She couldn’t not talk about it, especially because this latest affair plunged her to the deepest depths, dark thoughts included. “Literature is what has always saved me. […] It’s the only place I thought I belonged. And there, I no longer had it. » Now, by tackling her past head-on, and telling her version of the facts, as “honestly” as possible, as she says, “I take my place back. Otherwise, it would be a diversion. But this book is a hunt for diversions! »

Here we are. However, while we believed that she had experienced enough in terms of abandonment, aggression, and crises of all kinds, the author concludes her book with a final twisted episode, and not the least. We won’t tell you everything, but as nothing is simple, and the truth can only be complex, Marie Demers adds a layer: “Without my psychologist, I would not have succeeded [à écrire ce livre]. […] There, I’m fine […], but I’m sure I’m afraid this novel will ruin my life. At the same time, to find this balance, I had to write it. It’s paradoxical: what saves me is what kills me…”

The diversions

Marie Demers

Hurtubise

342 pages