The hybridization of genres is a specialty of Anne Peyrouse, and her most recent work, Anne Hébert, if you watched over my sadness, is no exception. Published by Hamac Editions, which she also directs, this high-quality work has the ability to provoke relevant feminist reflection in addition to upsetting with its most poignant passages.
In this skillful weaving between prose and verse and between fiction and autobiography, the author summons Anne Hébert, her literary mother, and Nicole Derail, her biological mother. Two ghosts who live in Peyrouse: the first died 20 years ago, and the second, in 2020: both were 83 years old.
Parenthesis: it is not essential to know the writer of Kamouraska to appreciate this book, but you will undoubtedly be curious after discovering it in fragments.
“I would like to be your accomplice. That you adopt me. Downright. That you bring me. However, I have a mother. You would be another mother. You are another mother. Another Anne,” writes Anne Peyrouse.
In this intelligently put together book, which benefits from the experienced pen of the author, it is a question of femininity, motherhood and mourning as well as the immense power of literature. It is a work with several dimensions, which will mobilize great readers who firmly believe that books accompany us throughout life.
Anne Hébert, if you watched over my sadness
Hamac Editions
192 pages