“I could write something like: they were four inseparable sisters promised to the most beautiful of lives. There was Violetta the queen, Gilda the pragmatic, Aïda the favorite and Mimi the hummingbird, ”we read in Angry girl on a stone benchby Véronique Ovaldé (No one is afraid of people who smile, 2019). However, one carnival evening, the youngest of the Salvatore family, six years old, disappeared never to reappear, and it was Aida who was blamed. “At that point, Violetta became condescending, Gilda became a camel, Aïda lost her privileged status and there were no more hummingbirds. »
Fifteen years after leaving Iazza, a (fictitious) Sicilian island, for Palermo, Aïda, in her early thirties, receives a call from Violetta who announces the death of their father, Salvatore Salvatore, a domestic tyrant fond of opera, from where the first names of his daughters borrowed from the tragic heroines of Verdi (The traviata, Rigoletto, Aida) and Puccini (Bohemian).
“When I write a novel, I advance partly blindly, then I realize that there are links with my own life, reveals the French novelist on the phone. My father was an opera freak, which was a bit strange because we always think that opera is for cultivated people, which was not the case for him, nor for Salvatore. The idea came to me because I saw this story in a tragic microcosm. Tragedy is very similar to opera, and the fact that the characters have the first names of opera heroines stuck to that story. »
Despite the resentment, Aïda agrees to return to her sisters and their mother, Silvia, suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, who takes her for Mimi, whom she has never stopped waiting for, in the small island community. .
“I like the idea of a community. I have always spoken of cells, whether family or community. My first novel, The sleep of fish (Seuil, 2000), spoke of a community of women who lived in a totally invented jungle. I’m interested in auscultating what’s going on in the little cells. The island resembles my idea of a family, and the family really fits the sense that I have of an island or a small community that is both protective and enclosing. »
Like her father, who hails from Centuripe near Mount Etna, Aida understands that the sun-drenched island is welcoming to tourists, but hostile to anyone who settles there permanently or returns after a long absence.
“Salvatore thought he was going to be able to leave, but there is something enclosing in the islands. You get there and become a pebble there. When I wondered what to title my book, I reread it and I realized that there were several times the word “pebble”, the word “stone”, and therefore this idea of something very mineral , very inert. Roughness, hardness and austerity are therefore very present. Returning to the island, Aïda rediscovers the particular system of island economies. »
cold as stone
As we discover quite early on, the young girl in the title is Aïda. The image of the woman seated on a stone bench, motionless and introspective, comes up a few times in the novel. This long repressed anger, and so frowned upon in a woman, isolates Aïda from her family, who fear at any moment that she will explode.
“We are always told to smile. Me, I was taught to be friendly, smiling and welcoming. The fact that Aïda’s natural benevolence and kindness turn, because of the family economy, into guilt, remorse, and then anger, I have the impression that it is something very feminine that going on right now. We’ve been told so much about putting on a good face rather than being an angry woman that after a while, it’s unbearable. »
When I write a novel, I go partly blind, then I realize that there are links to my own life.
Véronique Ovaldé notes that Aïda’s anger is also the result of a system that creates rivalry. “In families where there are only daughters, we tend to compare the sisters. It’s very violent because it’s something we can’t do anything about. The charm that we have when we are children is impossible to govern and that is why we are asked to be very kind and very kind. Hence Aida’s anger towards her family. »
Thanks to Pippo, a road mender who appears to be a Shakespearian madman in this family drama with thriller overtones, Aïda discovers the truth about the events of the past. “Pippo is a kind of ferryman between life and death. He is a secondary, but fundamental character, who gradually takes his place in this story; he is the mute choir, which watches and watches. »
Aïda’s discoveries will not appease her anger or her desire for revenge, which will be sweet, both for her and for the reader. “I wanted Aida to exact her revenge, but I didn’t want something Hollywood-style spectacular. His anger is like carbon monoxide: it is odorless, invisible and highly toxic. »
Incarnate narrator
Beyond the power of the drama and the resolution of the mystery surrounding Mimi’s disappearance, what seduces in angry girl on a bench Pierreit is the prodigious balancing act performed by Véronique Ovaldé, who skilfully moves between gravity, lightness and caustic humour.
“Humour allows us to escape shipwreck every day. We all find something to escape it, but we don’t all have the same means. For me, it’s reading and writing. And humor. This permanent step aside, this little smile, this complicity, this wink: all that is absolutely necessary. We are tragic animals, but we can still laugh about it a little. »
Moreover, the narrator of the novel experiences so much happiness in describing the faults of the characters, in having fun with their exchanges, that she seems to be a protagonist of the story. “For a long time, I hardly dared to allow myself to do so, whereas this is basically how I, Véronique Ovaldé, want to tell this story, without artifice. I allowed myself to embody this narrator who does not let go of her characters or the reader, and who also allows me to have a healthy distance from all these stories. It is also the role of the little voice that we always have in our head, which sometimes prevents us from sleeping, but which allows us to adjust our focus differently. »
As the story ends, the narrator reminds us of “our common curse and privilege,” including us both in the Salvatore clan, in the island community and in the great human family. “That last sentence is very important because it says that nothing can prevent this end that awaits us from coming. What I like when I write a book is that you can read it like a bunch of stories; in this one, you can understand that I also wanted to pay homage to our perishable nature. »