A woman in her forties, big career, a child, always at the end of her emails, cracks. She says she only knew the ordinary, not having had the courage for the rest. But it is this ordinary that will get the better of her and lead her on an existential quest: “How does a rich woman, in a rich country, come to no longer want her life? »
Posted at 11:30 a.m.
Her name is Marie, fictional alter ego (but not so much) of Marie-Pierre Duval, a researcher and producer who has worked on flagship shows like The mavericks, Everybody talks about it and two golden menbefore embarking on a change of life that inspired this beautifully titled first novel In the land of quiet despair. Marie is also “the neighbour, the friend, the friend of the friend, the girl next door, the mother of the neighborhood”. ” I am The leaky woman who would have chosen his relatives. Who wouldn’t have gone to Alabama, or London, or Paris. […] I am Nelly Arcan who would never have been Whore, neither a writer nor a genius. Nicely said.
Marie also works in the world of television, alongside the Host, the Boss, the Duchess, the Tyrant and the Petit Crisse. A ruthless world where, “to make numbers, you need letters” (the famous A!). With her lively pen, sometimes sharp, sometimes soft and colorful, the author offers us delicious passages behind the scenes of television. But it is perhaps by wanting to make fictional characters inspired by reality that she gave birth to people who were too caricatural and lacking in nuance.
The main character does not lack it, and this is a novel that will certainly touch many women (and men too) struggling with this quiet despair. But, the subject of the mental load, of the wonder woman and of the mother at the end of the roll not being new, we go through this story all the same with an impression of already-read.
In the land of quiet despair
Marie Pierre Duval
Stanke
304 pages