The material of Forest woman, her third novel, had been germinating in her for some time. However, it took a period of downtime, that imposed by the confinement, for Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette to draw from her the strength to collect fragments of life in order to transform them into a prodigious reflection on ancestral memory, the transmission of family values and ties.
“I groped forward because for a long time, I told myself that I was not sure that I was ready to write this, that there was something to write about it, because it is a little intangible, ”recalls the director and novelist, who fled the city to take refuge in the valley of her childhood on the edge of a forest with her man and their three children, as well as a family of friends.
For six months, four adults and five children thus occupied the Blue House, while the author’s parents lived in the Red House in the same row: “It’s not as if we were in a villa: it’s a old shackling shack, it frets and it stinks! But we said to ourselves that the land was going to offer us a bit of the divine. “
Autobiographical novel of bewitching poetry in which the imagination holds a large part, Forest woman looks like an inverted mirror of The woman who flees (Marchand de feuilles, 2015), magnificent portrait of his maternal grandmother, the painter Suzanne Meloche. The fruit of a “family history woven from abandonment”, she wanted to forge links with her family, the community and nature.
“I have the impression that this novel could have been called The woman who stays. How do I stay, how to be alive, woman, mother, rooted? What do I want to do with my life, how will I celebrate it, honor my passage? All these questions go hand in hand with a kind of reverence, humility in the face of the living, to all that grows. I realized that I didn’t know anything, that I didn’t know how to name things, that I was bad! “
The greatness of the ordinary
Si Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette celebrates the beauty of nature in Forest woman, it also gives pride of place to its violence, to the cruelty of the cycle of life. While the threat of the “bad virus” does not hover over the Sylvan Bubble, death haunts the tale from start to finish.
“We saw a lot of people die and we realized more than ever that we were going to die. It’s as if stopping puts you in front of this overwhelming evidence. It’s violent, but it’s healthy violence. The quest for Forest woman, it is a quest for rooting. I think that seeing our ephemerality helps us to take root more. “
The one who defines herself as “a tourist from the countryside” pauses: “It’s not easy to write about beauty, and that weakens me a lot. It’s not easy for me to talk about it because it’s not epic like The woman who flees ; there is something very simple and philosophical about this quest. “
As simple as it is, this quest to take root in the heart of a daily life punctuated by learning the names of conifers and flowers, by picking sweet clover and fiddleheads, by hunting for critters that crawl in the area. house seems magnified under the graceful pen of the novelist.
We saw a lot of people die and we realized more than ever that we were going to die.
It’s as if stopping puts you in front of this overwhelming evidence. It’s violent, but it’s healthy violence. The quest for Forest woman, it is a quest for rooting. I think that seeing our ephemerality helps us to take root more.
It is true that in the foreground, we find quotes from the filmmaker Manon Barbeau (“It is you who make her, the beauty”) and the writer Romain Gary (“Do not necessarily say things as they are. past, but turn them into legends ”).
“The book was almost called Ordinary miracles. It is as if slowness had shed new light on everyday actions. Braiding my guy’s hair can be a miracle in itself. It all depends on the value we place on small gestures. You have to take the time to stop, because all these gestures will tell a life story. The value you place on them can be immense. “
“I didn’t write this book for my children,” she continues, “but during those months, I remembered telling myself that my only power was the imprint that my kids were going to wear from that period. I wanted to turn that into something deep that was going to pull them up for the future. “
Tree of life
By her way of juxtaposing the present of confinement, her memories, the family past and ancestral stories, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette signs a novel whose structure evokes the rings of a tree.
In Forest woman, a novel nourished in particular by readings by Ponge, Thoreau and Valéry, the novelist writes that when a tree “becomes worn and too old, an extension of itself takes over and will then be perpetuated by an extension of the extension, and and so on. The tree is a divisible living being. He is one, together. Like the members of a family. Like the branches of a family tree.
“I hadn’t thought of the figure of the family tree, but I was actually thinking of the family entity that we were trying to make fit: we are one, together. “
This statement is reminiscent of one of the last sentences of The woman who flees, where it already dealt with rooting and the conclusion of which was camped in the same place as Forest woman : “I am free together, me. “
“Taking an interest in everything that was rooted around me allowed me to find my roots there, which remain fragile. Being confined in this place allowed me to meet the living who had a special link with this valley that I have frequented since I was very young. I feel like it saved me a bit from connecting with the Sylvan identity. To be in the midst of this fragile and beautiful abundance has done me good and continues to help me get through it. “
When it is pointed out to him that the word “fragile” came up a few times during the conversation, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette’s face lights up with a smile of pride.
“I have the impression that great strength coexists with vulnerability. It is something that is tamed because we tend not to glorify vulnerability, but rather to crush it. The more I assume my share of vulnerability, the more rooted I feel. I have the feeling that Forest woman, it is the celebration of strength and vulnerability. From the moment I integrate the two, I am both powerful and extremely fragile. It sums up my essence as a woman and as a mother. “