This “angry girl on a stone bench” that inspired the title of the novel is Aïda. In her early thirties, she lives in Palermo, survives as best she can. It has been more than 15 years since she was forced to leave her family, held responsible by her father for the disappearance of her youngest sister.
She still ruminates on her childhood memories when her older sister contacts her; their father is dead, the estate must be settled.
Under overwhelming heat, Aïda resigns herself to returning to the land of her childhood, at the risk of breaking the hard-earned balance that has allowed her to survive the rejection of her family for all these years. This is how she finds her two older sisters and her aging mother on this volcanic island where she was born, off the coast of Sicily. Right in the middle of the scents of eucalyptus and the smells of sand, mixed with those of “diesel”… The ideal place to camp a family, notes the French writer, contacted in Paris.
“Not only do I love Sicily very much, but I also have a passion for the islands, the island state of mind… Island paranoia, island madness, the protective side of insularity and at the same time atrociously enclosing : All of this meant that I had found the right place to write this family story. An island that is like a “slightly viscous” cocoon, which always ends up catching up with you.
When I start to write a text, I like to place it as far as possible from my home; I think it would dry up my imagination if it happened in Paris, under that gray, ugly sky, and with the somewhat sad and morose Parisian humidity.
Veronique Ovalde
Sisterhood rivalry
The novel first appeared to him under the fleeting image of two little girls who passed through the window to slip quietly out of the family home: Aïda and Mimi, the youngest of the four sisters. The one who, with Aïda, was the father’s favourite; a somewhat rough man who can also be a loving father, concedes the writer, but who, because of his too great love for his two youngest daughters, has made his two eldest unhappy.
“In fact, the big culprit is the father. Even if he has plenty of extenuating circumstances, he’s the big culprit, because he’s going to create this relationship between his daughters. »
Véronique Ovaldé therefore explores these “family choreographies” where we discover a deep sibling rivalry, jealousy, disappointments too, but above all, a great cowardice and a lot of guilt.
“My mother, who is an absolutely charming woman, very sweet, very simple and modest, when she read the book, she was absolutely crazy about it and she said to me: ‘You were able to say who your father was'” , confides the writer.
In each of the novels that I write, everything is twisted; everything is yet another variation of my main motif. I love, in fact, the skids that I grant myself.
Veronique Ovalde
Surprisingly, Véronique Ovaldé tells us that she writes at night, between 3 a.m. and 6 or 7 a.m. in the morning. An insomniac habit taken shortly after the birth of his eldest son, who will be 25 years old.
“I started to sleep very badly at that time. And from there, I started sleeping in tiny bits. I sleep three hours, I wake up and I do something; then I can sleep. And it’s quite ideal for working since many times in the same day you have moments of extreme lucidity, of extreme awareness. »
Especially since this rhythm of writing allows him to maintain a very special relationship with the “imperative oneirism” of the night, this magic and this fantasy that would otherwise be impossible during the day. “So much so that in the morning, I don’t really know what I wrote during the night, so I reread myself and I’m always surprised – for good or bad. »
“Of course, I’m tired like all people who sleep badly,” she says. But afterwards, it allows you to live differently. No, really, I’ll never complain about that because it’s a gift. »
Angry girl on a stone bench
Veronique Ovalde
flammarion
320 pages