The second novel by Marie-Hélène Sarrasin, What devours us, is populated by carnivorous plants and characters mourning their dreams. The former police officer Siméon mourns the loss of his memory. However, he clings to the room The king is dying by Eugène Ionesco, from which he tries to retain passages to make them his last defense against oblivion.
In the book, three women gravitate around Siméon. They have all suffered many disappointments, which they now carry around like a burden.
His wife, Madeleine, a Montreal florist, regrets having been uprooted from her village in Lanaudière when she got married in 1967. His granddaughter, Marine, is plunged into a solitude that she did not choose. As for her sister, Suzanne, she never got over seeing the family home slip through her fingers.
“Bitterness is what consumes the characters. They have the feeling that there is something that they could not do or that escapes them,” affirms the author, in an interview with The duty. Madeleine, Marine and Suzanne will, however, all try to get out of this state, she adds.
In his case, Siméon is rather consumed by Alzheimer’s disease. “He is experiencing the disappearance of his identity, his memory and the influence he has on the world,” underlines Mme Buckwheat.
Marine, who is at the forefront of his decline, tries to distract him by reading passages from the play to him. The king is dying, which he then pretends to remember. His granddaughter therefore engages in this ritual with him daily, under the strict eye of Madeleine. Although the latter takes care of her husband, she nevertheless maintains a love-hate relationship with him.
As in Ionesco’s play, where the characters all act differently with the sovereign having learned that he will soon die, the women around the former policeman try to pull him “to one side or the other” , notes the author. His wife is rather cold towards him, while Marine redoubles her tenderness towards him.
But in the end, no one has control over the fate of Simeon or that of the monarch in the play The king is dyingnotes the 40-year-old writer.
The latter is particularly fond of this classic work by the illustrious playwright, because it has the effect of instilling a good dose of humility in anyone who reads it. “He who rules thinks he can live as long as he wants. But when he dies, there will be nothing to do. It’s going to happen no matter who you are. »
Plants and magical realism
Marie-Hélène Sarrasin has chosen to set her new book in the same world as her first, Twelve acres. “I became attached to the characters. I felt like playing in that universe again,” says the author, seated in a Montreal café with plant-covered walls.
The setting is also reminiscent of that of her new novel, given that Madeleine earns her living as a florist. When she is not working, the old lady takes the opportunity to fill her personal collection with shoots stolen from the Botanical Garden.
“If I could have a parallel life, I would be a horticulturist,” confides the CEGEP literature professor. For now, she is content to garden in her free time and invent stories full of plants.
In What devours us, nature, however, is not incidental. She acts according to the emotions of the characters. “The more the bitterness rises in Suzanne, the more her village [Mandeville] is flooded. Madeleine is also consumed by this feeling. The more it invades, the more carnivorous plants take up space in her home,” illustrates Mme Buckwheat.
This touch of magical realism is dear to the author, because it gives her the opportunity to completely immerse herself in the imagination, she explains. “I like the fact that we can do improbable things in literature. Otherwise, why are we doing this? » she says, laughing.
Poetry also runs through the latest novel by Marie-Hélène Sarrasin, to whom we already owe three collections.
The world of the book also becomes worrying at times, when doubts arise regarding the circumstances of a character’s death. Mme Sarrasin also intends to further exploit this type of dark intrigue in the sequel to What devours uswhich she is currently writing.
She says she was inspired by the work Prey, by Andrée A. Michaud, reading which gave him chills. The book features three teenagers on a manhunt in the forest. “After finishing it, I was afraid to go back into the woods,” she says, amused.
Back to basics
If the characters of What devours us were invented from scratch, Marie-Hélène Sarrasin says she was nevertheless inspired by scraps of her real life to create this universe. The author describes having returned to her roots five years ago, settling in Saint-Gabriel-de-Brandon, very close to her native village in Lanaudière.
In the novel, Madeleine is bitter at having had to leave this same region by marrying Siméon. Her origins then take a huge place in her daily life, because she wants to reconnect with them.
“I find that in literature, Montreal is already very well represented,” says M.me Buckwheat. She therefore enjoys setting her works in Lanaudière locations. “It seems that we are happy to find ourselves in a literary landscape, that it is not only interesting there, but that it is also interesting here. »
If the village spirit is less present in his new novel than in Twelve acresthe writer however wanted to include again the Daoust sisters, who are the chief “gossips” of the area.
These women are important, because they maintain the stories and the memory of the places, underlines the author. “But it is a form of memory which is more of a legend, because it is hyperdistorted. It starts from something true which then went a long way,” she believes.
As in fables, Marie-Hélène Sarrasin enjoys blurring the boundary between reality and imagination. “But the monster of Lake Maskinongé, everyone knows that it exists. I won’t surprise anyone by talking about him in my book,” she says, laughing.