Cleopatra is 15 years old and she was raised in cotton wool, by a single mother, keen to offer her only the best: privileged environment, private primary education, we quickly understand that education takes a primordial place in their home, so much so that there is even a “hall of fame” to display his numerous school prizes and other trophies.
However, beneath her top-of-class appearance, the teenager believes she is suffering from a mysterious illness, a serious mental illness, a certain dissociative identity disorder. As proof: she has no memory of everything that her mother joyfully reminds her of, neither of her childhood, nor of her supposed youthful exploits, everything seems to have evaporated from her mind.
Under this veneer of lightness, Laurence Provencher signs here an original and disturbing first novel about a particular mother-daughter relationship, certainly unconditional love on the one hand, and the pressure of performance on the other. But there will also be a lot of talk about family secrets and class defectors, a particularly hot topic these days. Like Rue Duplessisby Jean-Philippe Pleau, Luxury tells a story of migration where two worlds are in opposition. With all the tears that this implies. As a bonus, Provencher dares to make a twisted proposition, some would say cruel, even toxic, comically well put together and quietly revealed over the pages, in a clever dead-end dropper. Let us highlight the author’s lively style, her fluid writing and this attention to innocuous detail which kills and makes you smile (often yellow), which means that you sometimes recognize yourself, sometimes less (thank God). A feather to remember, certainly.
Luxury
Quebec America
274 pages