JP Chabot signs with the help of his friend Audrey-Ann Bélanger Journey to the secret garden villa, novel of uncompromising beauty, which deconstructs the “compensatory fictions” with which the lives of disabled people are described. A powerful, yet complex, celebration of the transformative power of friendship.
The novel is signed JP Chabot, but just below the title also appears this essential and intriguing mention: “with the help of Audrey-Ann Bélanger”. This is because, although it is not exactly a four-handed work, Journey to the Secret Garden Villa nor is it the work of one man.
“What I found funny, with the mention “with the help of”, is that we always assume that it is me who helps him,” explains the writer (The wooden book, The way up) about her friend, who lives with Friedreich’s ataxia, a degenerative disease, and who gets around using an electric wheelchair. “It always bothers me a little as a wording. I’m not helping Audrey-Ann, it’s just that we want to do things together and we each have a body. »
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
Audrey-Ann Bélanger and JP Chabot in interview
“And it happens with all my other friends,” adds Audrey-Ann, to whom we must listen carefully, given her speech affected by the illness. “We often tell them: Audrey-Ann is lucky to have you. And I sometimes reply: “They are lucky to have me too.” »
To be seen
JP Chabot and Audrey-Ann Bélanger met in 2017 at CEGEP de Rimouski where he was this young professor stubbornly obsessed with ideals, and she was this cheerful student who wanted to leave her mark by publishing the story of her life. He will quickly discover in her a friend, who will allow him to open his eyes to the beauty of life, but also to the numerous pitfalls of a daily life, that of so many disabled people, fraught with pain and degradation.
Punctuated with extracts from Audrey-Ann’s diary, Journey to the Secret Garden Villa thus responds to several mise en abyme, while on a trip to Costa Rica, JP reads aloud the manuscript of the novel that we hold in our hands to Audrey-Ann who comments live.
Both a story of a crisis of faith in literature, a reflection on the watertight boxes to which human relationships are confined and a celebration of the transformative power of friendship; this novel, as disturbing as it is magnificent, as biting as it is sweet, partly recounts the astonishment of a young man who notes how difficult it is, in public spaces, for disabled people to move around, and therefore to exist. . “And it’s not something I would have been sensitive to if we hadn’t met,” thinks JP
Audrey-Ann sums up the situation as simply as it is concise: “We just don’t have the opportunities to be seen. »
Compensatory fictions
Journey to the Secret Garden Villalike so many great novels, invents a form of its own and which serves its purpose as it unfolds. As Chabot’s reflection on what he calls “compensatory fictions” becomes more nuanced, a way of designating everything that humans strive for in order not to throw in the towel, including this noble and threadbare speech of resilience.
PHOTO CHARLES WILLIAM PELLETIER, SPECIAL COLLABORATION
JP Chabot and Audrey-Ann Bélanger
A speech that JP’s acerbic mind would have spontaneously wanted to make fun of. “But what I understood,” he confides, “is that when I say “Resilience, I would throw that in the trash,” there’s something quite violent about it, because Audrey-Ann doesn’t wasn’t just told that resilience was good, it’s something that really helps him live. She has her compensatory fictions and I have mine, which is literature. »
Which does not mean, however, that the vocabulary used to talk about disabled people does not call for its own revolution. “Formulas like “She does this despite her handicap”, by hearing them, we end up assimilating them,” says Audrey-Ann.
In recent decades, we have collectively raised awareness about several minority groups and this has often happened in language, in words. It will also be necessary, for disability, to dismantle brick by brick each of these images, these ready-made formulas.
JP Chabot
What does JP admire about Audrey-Ann? “Our relationship nourishes me a lot,” he says, “because I am naturally more pessimistic and there is always a desire for things to be good. »
Audrey-Ann blushes, then asks that JP go to the bathroom, while she responds too. “JP is my intelligent friend who brings me back to earth. It is comforting, reassuring. I know he doesn’t judge me. With him, I can just be okay, here, now. »
Journey to the Secret Garden Villa
The Quartier
416 pages