In a frank and straightforward language, a woman reveals herself through small pieces of life, fragments of moods in which daily life, love, death, suffering, social networks participate in her beats of heart.
From the grandmother who no longer recognizes anyone to her almost father dying of cancer to the Beach Boys – without whom she would be a lost woman – and the men, whom she loves so much, but it is the “fault with their erotic mustaches, real bow ties”, the narrator of A few days with me expresses the ups and downs of this celibate life. And it is in this series of exploded, “stroboscoped” thoughts that the power and intensity of the story reside.
Each reflection is delivered without modesty, with intimacy, in a style that grazes the proprieties. A few sentences per page offer themselves as a digest of emotion and are enough to reveal the tensions, the doubts, the desires of this woman like so many others. And this is where Marilyse Hamelin, the author of Motherhood, the hidden face of sexism (Leméac), avoids the trap of the hermetic narrative. Because beyond her lifestyle, it is the heroine’s thoughts, sincere and human, selfish and empathetic, that make her a woman anchored in her time, in her North American reality.
The story could be sufficient in itself, but the illustrator Agathe Bray-Bourret accompanies all in flexibility and evocation the words of Hamelin. In a style that is both airy, uninhibited and humorous, she takes a light look at these pieces of life, offering them in shades of pink that marry the effect of intimacy found in the text. A few days with me is ultimately part of this narcissistic literature, which relies on this need to tell the ego and no doubt thus reach out to other solitudes.
Extract from “A few days with me”