In the short biography of Romane Bladou which accompanies North Atlantic, we can read that the author is also a visual artist, who uses the photographic medium to “explore the ephemeral and the places we pass through. This gift for seizing the present moment, for capturing the influence of landscapes on identity, and their reflection in interior storms, is found in each chapter of this first novel which creates, with scattered pieces of existence, a frame like the sea, tumultuous and soothing.
In various places located along the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean – Newfoundland, Scotland, Iceland and Brittany -, Romane Bladou sketches the worlds of four characters, photographed in a moment of flight, in a departure from themselves and their roots towards a new beginning or a renewal that will bring them all back, one way or another, to the source.
First there is Camille, who, to escape the weariness and emptiness of her daily life, finds herself on the Bonavista peninsula, in Newfoundland, tormented by the same demons, whom she tries to stifle under the clamor of the waves. The author then turns to the torrential rains of the Scottish winter, on the Isle of Mull, where a little boy, William, makes the beach and the tides his playground, and draws from them the tools to restore the smile at his mother, whose couple is withering.
Then, Lou, a marine biology researcher, travels to Iceland to undertake research on the lumpfish, but above all to find clues to the death of his brother, who disappeared at sea. Overwhelmed by his mourning and by the fragility of existence , he anchors himself to life thanks to the letters of a lover who has remained in France, to which he no longer finds the strength to reply. In Brittany, Célia, a teenager swallowed up by the possibilities of the world, is already nostalgic for her future fallen loves and for what she will not have been able to accomplish.
These four stories, which, on the surface, have little in common, are swept away by the same powerful gusts of the sea and crossed by the same ocean, which changes according to moods, needs and thoughts. Simultaneously a symbol of friendship, play, death and rebirth, the Atlantic breathes its advice, soothes, shakes, offers its riches as well as its perils, its poetry as its abysses, makes its mark in the heart of the characters’ identities. .
Immersed in the uncertainty that precedes a turning point, they follow the momentum of lumpfish, migratory fish driven by an urgency that approaches instinct, but which anchor themselves to the seabed so as not to drift, like humans. cling to their roots, their memories, their hopes.
The writer’s pen unfolds in a bittersweet poetry reminiscent of childhood. Like the flow of the tides, she explores the dizziness and mourning of youth, her reflections and emotions that swell to retract better. A novel whose simplicity hides a rare vulnerability.