“We imagine ourselves healing the world, when we are only healing our own wounds,” writes July Giguère in her most recent novel, The birth of Agathe. The author, whose work has already explored the themes of filiation and trauma, retraces the thread of an intimate story to uncover the origins of romantic tics, fears and impulses, deliberately to question their transmission.
We find Lili, narrator and protagonist, at the bedside of her little daughter, Agathe, a few months old. Her new motherhood is happy, but it also revives the wounds of a family story crossed by violence, abuse and conflicts: “The night I gave birth [ma fille] in the world, all the suppressed fear of my childhood resurfaced to swallow me. »
Lili feels the need to swim against the tide, to reshape preconceptions to see things more clearly. She revisits social prescriptions as well as her own history, seeking a peace that will allow her not to transfer her burden to her daughter. Probing the question of transmission, she takes note of her responsibilities: “Children are the same everywhere, always. It is their parents who are not equal. »
In the same spirit, she reaffirms that “it is children who unconditionally love those who are responsible for them, however unfit they sometimes prove to be, and not the other way around, as is claimed. » In order to honor this love, but also because her attachment to her mother and her ancestors, as imperfect as they may be, is unconditional, she tries to give new impetus to her life by repairing what can still be repaired.
Feed, rock, change
In a confidential tone, as close as possible to an unfiltered, pulsating and moving intimacy, the narration sometimes takes a step aside to comment on the complexity of feelings and the context in which they are staged. The birth story is thus an opportunity to return to the obstetric violence which sometimes governs hospital environments: “Medicine is a place of power where, as in all places of power, violence is exercised, in certain respects. unheard of, which is completely ignored. » A moment felt, full of nuances, which recalls the Little giants by Pier Courville.
The short chapters alternate between reminiscences and forays into the daily life of motherhood, in a crossover free from the chronology of events. This structure breathes dynamism into the story, and accompanies the opening of the ruts that enclose taboos and traumas, accurately signifying that their liberation is gradual.
The narrator receives motherhood with a resolutely humble posture. It is not she who gave life, but her daughter who offers her new perspectives: “Alone [l’enfant] can make those who take him under their wing into parents. » It is this intelligent and daring way of turning everything upside down that allows July Giguère to live peacefully in a scarred world, to be ready for new battles.