Claudia Larochelle’s new book, The unsightlyfeatures three stories marked by the power of sisterhood and the desire to feel free, despite the traumas experienced over the years.
To write this work, the author took part in the collection III of QuébecAmérique, which invites writers to create three stories based on memories of their lives. She inserted a good portion of fiction.
For the first part of the book, Claudia Larochelle says she was inspired by her years with her friends at Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes college, in Longueuil, which was then reserved for girls. In the second portion, the narrator enters the world of journalism, where she encounters an unhealthy climate. The third story instead relates the young woman’s bumpy journey to finding love.
“The narrator is no different from me. It’s really my alter ego, she explains in an interview with The duty. However, I am adding fictional elements to his existence. Often these are things I have heard or seen. »
The journalist and presenter, however, maintains that she has slipped in real moments of her life, such as the interview given to her around twenty years ago by the French author Alain Robbe-Grillet, who died in 2008. “He advanced towards me to put his hands on my chest, to grip it firmly, a sort of taking possession,” she wrote in The unsightly ones.
During the first wave of the #MeToo movement, in 2017, Claudia Larochelle had already recounted this episode on social networks. However, she then refrained from revealing the name of Mr. Robbe-Grillet. “I didn’t feel strong enough to nominate anyone. I was still fragile, she emphasizes. It’s as if, today, I no longer want to hide. Speech has become enormously freer since then. At 46, I felt ready. »
Unlike before, fear no longer prevents the author from acting, she says. “Violence causes fear which is blocking and which becomes like a prison. I’m not in prison anymore. »
Courage and disgrace
By choosing to title his book The unsightlythe author says on the one hand that she wanted to pay tribute to those who dare to break ranks and denounce, even if these speeches earn them reproaches.
On the other hand, the title also refers to certain of our behaviors which, in hindsight, seem devoid of elegance, continues Claudia Larochelle. “When, for example, you lower yourself for a man and submit to his impulses and desires. »
The writer therefore mentions having placed some advice intended for younger people throughout the pages, so that they avoid falling into the same love traps as her. “It was through hurting myself that I was finally able to recognize the true goodness of a loving man,” she confides.
The common thread of the book is the desire to live fully, despite the scars left by various forms of violence, believes Claudia Larochelle. The work is crossed by this “desire for freedom, despite the after-effects”, she adds.
Liberating friendships
Sisterhood is saving in many cases, especially in the heart of workplaces marked by misogyny, according to Claudia Larochelle. Without the presence of women at her side throughout her journey, she “would not have been able to continue,” she believes, sitting at a table in a Montreal café.
The unsightly also pays tribute to those who had already been working in newsrooms for a long time, when the writer entered them in her twenties. “They really didn’t have it easy, worse than me,” she emphasizes, animatedly.
In the story, the narrator finds many allies in them, which does not prevent her from seeing her professional ideals shaken by entering the world of media. “I fell from a height when a former colleague became my boss. [Il] “he would sometimes chase journalists from his arts and entertainment section to the little corner to pressure them to submit their texts,” she relates.
Having left newsrooms a long time ago to devote herself to freelance work, Claudia Larochelle says she doesn’t know what the work climate is like there these days. However, she hopes that her book can appease some young reporters who are struggling to find a place for themselves. “The idea is to say, it’s going to be okay, I got through it. Here are some small ideas, perhaps, to see things differently. »
No “room of one’s own”
In literature, Claudia Larochelle says she enjoys working from reality, which is “such a stimulating and inspiring material”. “It’s really often my writing voice,” she notes about the mix between truth and fiction found in The unsightly.
The author also generally opts for writing short stories, due to her restrictive schedule, she explains. “I’m tired of constantly finding time to be creative and to write. I don’t have a “Room of my own,” to quote Virginia Woolf. I have to improvise it everywhere, and that’s a big difficulty. »
It is for this reason that the Canadian writer Alice Munro, who died on May 13 at the age of 92, once chose to devote herself to the short story. She did not believe she had the time necessary to be a novelist, notes Claudia Larochelle. “So, since that time, it hasn’t changed that much. It’s the same for me,” she notes.