She shocked us with her first novel, an autofiction story of unspeakable violence. Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire is back in force, with a second opus in the same vein, plunging the reader back between disgusting nausea and pure fascination. That’s an understatement.
It is written as is in the synopsis of this new title, as long and enigmatic as the first: I ask you to close your eyes and imagine a quiet placewhich will be absolutely necessary, it should be noted, after having gone through these 200 or so pages of screaming story, although far from being devoid of poetry.
“The line between fascination and nausea is thin and I constantly cross it,” writes Michelle Lapierre-Dallaire. And it’s a fact: the author demonstrates a cruel and shocking accuracy in the choice of words, the expression of feelings, and especially of experience. Let’s say that the trauma (“sexual violence, self-mutilation, suicide”) is not too much. Be warned. And hang in there.
If the young author addressed her twisted relationship with men in Were there limits if yes I crossed them but it was out of love ok, This time it is her equally twisted relationship with her mother that she attacks. Incestuous relationships with his passing lovers included. Cubed. As proof, these very first sentences of the book: “My life with my mother is a film that takes place in a tiny bed. A pornographic film in which I play a supporting role. » This gives you an idea of the subject, and especially of the prose, with its caustic lucidity.
Through short non-linear chapters, the author recounts this often one-sided love for this woman, larger than life in her eyes.
A woman whom the narrator venerates with an unconditional, passionate and irrational love, which is matched only by the visceral hatred she feels for men, and we immediately guess why.
Love for a mother undoubtedly cannot be explained, and this text is the ultimate demonstration.
At the turn of a page, between the story of his Barbie games, then his discoveries, healthy or unhealthy, and this increasingly heartbreaking disappointed love, sometimes comes a reflection which surprises, then not so much. Particularly this one, on the similarities between consenting prostitution and writing. Because yes, the narrator ended up being a prostitute, are you surprised?
“Ultimately,” she writes, “I sometimes feel more naked when I write than when someone pays me for sex. » Further, this: “Just as we constantly put the sex worker in her place as a whore, we always put the sex worker author in her place as a whore author who writes autofiction. » And this is where, shaken up by reading, the text takes on its full meaning, its importance.
I ask you to close your eyes and imagine a quiet place
The Wick
202 pages