How to tell the story of a housewife who did not make a fuss, acquiescing to the demands and opinions of her husband, subordinate to the needs of her children, a woman “who had taken on invisibility as her identity , not having known, wanted or been able to free themselves from it”? In this touching and captivating novel, Isabelle Monnin turns her memory into a field of excavation to meet her paternal grandmother, Odette Froyard, whose discretion hides a complex and tumultuous past. To fill the gaps in an excavation from which only scattered pieces of memories resulted, the writer seeks the truth in archives which only obscure the mystery and support a silence that only fiction and imagination may break. Following in the footsteps of a tiny existence, Isabelle Monnin traverses the major events of the century and provides a masterful demonstration of the power of romance to give meaning to a life, in its great reversals as well as in its smallest manifestations.
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