Posted at 8:00 p.m.
There are books that camouflage what their writing has cost their author, and others whose strength lies rather in the fact that they place at the heart of the text their own difficulties in saying without cliché what they are trying to name. radio gardenthe first publication by Charlotte Biron, belongs to this second category.
Struggling with a tumor in the jaw, the narrator of this story writes less “the story of a tumor”, as she puts it, than that of a body which for the first time becomes fully aware of itself in time of diagnosis. Inhabited by all the voices that her radio spits out, voices without a body, the young woman begins to dream of an existence relieved of the weight represented by this envelope in which we move. “My voice would never be more accountable to the body. »
Yes radio garden is a combat book – that word we use ad nauseam to designate the optimal attitude to adopt in the face of any form of serious health problem – it is not, however, a fight to stay alive. Let’s rather talk about a fight against language itself, which Charlotte Biron must be wary of so that her vocabulary is not infiltrated by all these metaphors, euphemizing or warlike, which seem to misrepresent the dilated and anxiety-provoking time of treatments.
“Unlike other sensations, there aren’t many synonyms for the word pain. My notes on the subject are laconic”, observes the one who manages not to let her sentences be invaded by these ready-made, and therefore fictitious, formulas which suggest that physical suffering and loneliness are places from which one day one returns completely. .
With a total absence of pathos, Charlotte Biron signs one of the most moving books of the year.
radio garden
Charlotte Biron
The Quartermaster
136 pages