Several years ago, when I was a journalist for the current notebook, I suggested to my colleagues that we make a big file that would allow us to answer this vast question: why do we have children?
Nobody took the bait. I quickly understood that my colleagues, who all had at least one child (unlike me), no longer wanted to answer this question. They had passed the stage where we ask ourselves. Or else, between the arena and ski lessons, they no longer had time to ask themselves.
Why do we have children? I find that to be one of the greatest existential themes there is. Especially today, when our planet is increasingly abused.
This question haunted me while reading Mathieu Latour’s latest novel, always mixed. I really like this author who doesn’t get all the attention he deserves. Five years ago, I wrote all the good things I think of him when his novel came out. fade away.
In this new opus, he tackles the issue of adoption and same-sex parenting, more specifically the reality of gay couples who adopt a child through the mixed bank, which is at the crossroads of two worlds, “that of foster families, whose function is to accommodate a child temporarily, and that of adoption, whose ultimate goal is obviously the creation of a bond of filiation,” writes the author.
Having himself gone through an adoption experience with his spouse, Mathieu Latour dissects in depth and depth what the men and women who go through this stage go through.
The reflections that precede the first gesture, the meetings with the professionals of the youth center that nourish a host of doubts, the evaluation tests that deflate your dream and shake your confidence, the terrible fear of seeing the child confided to finally being taken over by the biological mother, all of this is superbly told.
We learn that 95% of the children entrusted to a foster family through the Mixed Bank remain there and, in the vast majority of cases, can be adopted. But for 5% of cases, it is something else.
The author recounts the information meeting in which he took part with about thirty couples. “It means that the drama of seeing the child you love return to their family of origin, well, there is at least one couple among you tonight who will experience it”, declares a speaker, throwing thus a cold in the audience.
Through a gallery of characters (at the beginning we are a little lost), Mathieu Latour creates a puzzle whose all the pieces will fall into place at the end of the book, leaving us with many answers, but also questions about the deep sense of family ties.
One of the strengths of this novel is that it offers all the points of view: those of the parents, of the children and of the biological mothers. First there are these two couples, Kevin and Nicolo, as well as David and Martin. The two appeal to the joint bank to become fathers. William will enter the life of the first couple and Logan in that of the second.
And then there are Mélissa and Katia, the mothers of the two boys. Without giving too many details, the family project will see the light of day for one of the couples. But for the other, it will unfortunately lead to a dead end.
In the course of this story, which spans some twenty years, we discover all the elements that can be part of an adoption project, in particular that of the quest: the son who wants to find his biological mother, the mother who wants to find her son and the teenager who wants to find the foster family he has lost.
It is these stories of searching for the other that provide the most moving moments in the book.
Some might accuse the author of conveying clichés. The mothers in this novel are single women, often struggling with a problem of addiction, who have multiplied foster homes and who have experienced violence and aggression in different forms at a very young age. However, this is the reality of many women who must entrust their child to a foster family.
This breathless story, which escapes the game of classic chronology, is one of the beautiful surprises of the winter season. This carefully written story takes the form of a television series script. Attention TV producers… If I were you, I’d get my hands on this book ASAP.
At one point, the author quotes a nice expression that is used to designate the bond between a parent and his child: the author of his days! “Can the same be said of an adoptive parent? Isn’t this one rather compared to a writer who would undertake to complete an unfinished work? writes Mathieu Latour.
But further on, he adds: “Adoption is a bit like that. Sometimes several chapters are written beforehand, sometimes the material can be summed up in just a few lines, but in all cases it is a question of working with what we have, to make the most beautiful work of it. »
Reading this passage came to partially answer my famous question. We make children in particular to say that we are the authors of their days, the writers of a story that is still in progress.
This book, which is written every day, has been squeezed very tightly by many parents over the past few days. I understand them so much. This novel has no right to stop.
always mixed
Mathieu Latour
Alain Lafrance Editor