Prolific writer with many hats, winner of the Governor General’s Award for her children’s novel A summer of love and ashesAline Apostolska focuses here on the fate of young Anastasia who, in May 1968, was 8 years old and living with her parents in Paris, after having been raised by her paternal grandparents in Athens.
While demonstrators invade the streets of the capital, she enjoys life in the beautiful neighborhoods, living under the roof of a rich owner who employs her parents. But all is not rosy in this home dominated by a violent and tyrannical father… Then, time skip, we find her years later, between Montreal and New York, on the verge of sixty.
One thing leading to another, she reconstructs in reverse the years that have passed, to finally return to the troubled circumstances surrounding her departure from Paris.
Through this skillfully constructed story, the author draws a journey filled with estrangements and escapes. Her father’s flight, her mother’s, and finally her own – her whole life was nothing but a headlong flight, Anastasia will think in hindsight. But the past ends up catching up with her and the only possible outcome is to stop fleeing to meet her.
A quest for identity from another time, this novel reflects on what we inherit and what is transmitted to us. Can we simply move away and turn the page on those who came before us to avoid reproducing the same patterns from one generation to another? We would have to believe not.
So sweet France
Flammarion Quebec
328 pages