a heartbreaking debut novel about anorexia

Literary journalist Alice Develey opens the doors of a children’s hospital in this first novel through the daily life of an anorexic teenager. A rare and precious testimony that makes “Tombée du ciel” a book of this literary rentrée not to be missed.

For her first novel, Alice Develey delves into her teenage memories of treatments and white coats. She discusses anorexia and exposes the daily lives of young patients in hospital, a place that “should not exist”, “a child-crushing machine.” Published by L’Iconocaste, Fallen from the sky is available in bookstores from August 22.

The story: Alice is 14 years old. A slightly gothic teenager, she is finishing her third year of high school, reading novels non-stop, wandering between the lives of her divorced parents and talking mainly to Sissi, a beast that has been living in her head for a long time.

Alerted by her thinness, a doctor requests her hospitalization. Alice then arrives in a department where other teenage girls are staying. The hospital staff unites for one goal: to make her gain weight. But the young woman, far from eating more, no longer eats at all. Within the walls of the room, the treatments the young girl undergoes become more violent without gaining results.

“Under the mattress I hid a notebook. My diary,” writes Alice Develey at the very beginning of her novel. Fallen from the sky presents itself as the diary of a 14-year-old girl, a notebook hidden in the corner of a room like that of any teenager. The book takes up the codes: rapid writing, account of daily life, opinions on new encounters… A seemingly banal gesture that is nevertheless an act of urgency. Alice writes because she wants to bear witness to her life since her hospitalization. Leaving a trace can no longer wait, her suicide is planned for the next day.

Far from the lightness of the eponymous song by Jacques Higelin, Fallen from the sky is a tough book. Alice Develey, hospitalized as a teenager to treat, among other things, her anorexia, wrote this first novel in the light of her experience. Sixteen years later, the pain and anger are still raw. The author transmits them with force in this raw, alarming text, sometimes difficult to receive, but even more difficult to let go.

“I’m going to die in a psychiatric unit cell, and we need to understand why.” In this last-minute diary, the narrator tells it all. She returns to the first signs of anorexia, first the phobia of sugar, then the escalation of deprivation leading to meals consisting of an apple, direct tickets to hospitalization. Throughout the chapters, she also reveals what anorexia really is, how patients think, perceive themselves. A necessary pedagogy around a disease that is falsely well known and which reveals the total inadequacy of medical treatments.

Contract to deprive of all personal belongings in the event of not gaining weight, meals provided by tubes, permanent blackmail, medications by the dozen… Fallen from the sky is a cry from the heart. Alice Develey writes about the practices she has undergone and which, as in many other cases, lead to nothing. Without blaming the medical staff, because this first novel also reflects the lack of means in hospitals, the author opens wide the windows of a closed world.

“Who would imagine that a little girl is sleeping here, behind this barricade of keys?” she writes again. No one, perhaps, but this first novel shows it well. After the opening of the windows, that of the debate and the financing?

“Fallen from the Sky” by Alice Develey (L’Iconoclaste, 400 pages, 20.90 euros)

Extract : “I’m just a 14-year-old kid in oversized pajamas. When I stand up, you’d swear I could stand on my knees. My back has taken on the shape that old people take in their wheelchairs. I collapse on myself. My bangs, now too long, cut my face in two. I can’t see anything anymore, but there’s nothing to see anyway. Since I’ve been here, I’ve lived in a land without sun. A world of extinct volcanoes, gray ash and craters as deep as my memory lapses. Sometimes, a hint of memories as thick as a fabric of stars comes back to me and I laugh. Often too, barely rekindled, the sparks evaporate and I forget. I disappear under the sheets hoping that the night will bring its answers. But the darkness remains deaf to my calls. I scream in a desert.” (“Fallen from the sky”, pages 9-10).