It is a very dark part of the history of France that Véronique Olmi reveals in the kid. The popular novelistBakitha) recounts how orphans in the care of the state during the interwar period actually became prisoners, or slaves, or both, and were kept in the most abject conditions.
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The fate of little Joseph, whose mother did not survive a clandestine abortion, is the one by which we will discover all the horrors and the inhumanity of the system. His gentleness and his incomprehension, his instinct for survival and his callousness, it is only through his gaze, at the height of a child, that we see the noose tightening around him, with no possible way out.
Véronique Olmi’s writing, very lyrical, literally makes us feel in our flesh all the atrocities suffered by Joseph and his companions in misfortune. It is often necessary to take breaks during the reading because the atmosphere is heavy, the violence omnipresent and the injustice of the situation unbearable. And even if it’s necessary to tell it and we shouldn’t be an ostrich, the beauty of the writing sometimes borders on complacency and we wonder if the author isn’t going too far in her way so beautifully imagery to describe the most sordid ugliness.
Joseph has two exit doors, love and music. It will take years for him to finally arrive at hope, thanks to a little luck and a few kind souls. This light that we no longer expected comes late in the story, in extremis, and is a bit of a relief.
If Véronique Olmi speaks here of a specific historical case, we come out of this book with a thought for all the abused children, all the childhoods flouted by official organizations supposed to protect them – we only have to think here of the orphans of Duplessis and the drama of residential schools for Aboriginals. As if innocence had always been a target of choice, a heartbreaking observation that painfully reminds us the kid.
the kid
Veronique Olmi
Albin Michael
294 pages