While enjoying a writing residency in Eastern Europe, Danielle Dussault soaked up the atmosphere of the places where Kafka lived, whose ghost was already hovering in Salamanders (The Instant, 2007). “Kafka’s quirky world came to mind. She feared herself becoming a tiny insect, swept away by a gust of wind. (“Changes”)
Fifteenth book of the author, the collection of short stories The bridges of Prague is the fruit of his wanderings and reveries in the birthplace of the German-speaking writer. Besides the pale specter of Kafka, tunes by Mozart and Dvorák, as well as a song by Leonard Cohen, float in the streets, metro stations, cafes, shopping centers and old apartments visited by a solitary narrator in search of ‘inspiration. “Shadows pass. I didn’t write, but someone spoke to me today. (“Loneliness”)
As for the bridges in the title, they are either decorative, like the Charles Bridge, where one blends into the crowd of anonymous tourists, or, above all, metaphorical — the author takes care to emphasize this at the end. of certain stories. “Mother and daughter left to fend for themselves. A bridge to rebuild each time. Until that indefinite day, when the mother will no longer tell the facts to anyone and that… the tenuous bridge between mother and daughter breaks. (“Jeruzalemská”)
This bridge can also be the one between life and death, between the past and the present, as in “The doll of the Slavia café”, where a young man tells the narrator that he is haunted by the spirit of his grandmother. -mother.
Alternately poetic, dreamlike and telegraphic, Danielle Dussault’s writing illustrates, through banal everyday scenes, hallucinatory delusions and waking dreams, boredom, weariness, the feeling of oppression, even alienation. , of beings — especially women — at a crossroads. Despite the beauty of the places that she evokes with fine impressionist touches, the disturbing atmosphere of strangeness that she skilfully creates and the cohesion of the collection, the whole is revealed as a series of variations on the same theme that often arouses the interest, but rarely emotion.