Novelist Joyce Maynard has written about the family often. Unforgettable novels like The mountain man or One day you will tell this story, two of his finest titles.
Corn Where happy people lived goes beyond anything she has been able to say on the subject so far. It was no surprise that he was awarded the Grand Prix for American Literature at the beginning of November – an undoubtedly deserved award.
Throughout Eleanor’s story, we travel over 40 years in the life of a woman who wanted nothing more in the world than to offer her children the happy childhood and the loving family she never had. has never had. A mother whose greatest fault is to have loved her children too much, and who will be cruelly punished for it.
Her too great love ended up weighing on them like a burden as they grew older, as their sorrows became hers and she was determined to spare them the slightest pain. “Children had to know sadness, otherwise how would they know how to react when faced with it? Difficulties would come, whatever we do, ”she finally understood, perhaps much too late.
There is probably no more thankless role than that of a mother, can’t we help but think as we follow this woman who must learn to let go of these precious people she has brought into the world, but who ‘she cannot help suffering. And find, alone, her way through the complexities of family life, without ever having had anyone to show her the way to take.
After struggling to build the perfect home, Eleanor sees her kingdom crumble, helpless in the face of the destruction of the fruit of her efforts. She thus spends many years rehashing the past and healing her wounds, blaming herself for not having been up to giving her children a family like the one she created. But as children grow older, relationships change. “In the end, we survive a lot. We are transformed. But we continue, ”she writes.
Where happy people lived is a novel imbued with immeasurable sadness and equally great beauty. Joyce Maynard puts his finger in an incomparable way on these discomforts, these failures, these disappointments which gnaw the couple and motherhood. Explore family and marital ties – moreover in a small town where everyone knows and assesses each other – with finesse and deep sensitivity. And offers us a family drama punctuated by big and small tragedies which are measured against the yardstick of the history of a country, which has also known losses and great misfortunes.
Where happy people lived
Joyce Maynard
Philippe Rey
560 pages