It is a first novel imbued with poetry. With short texts, but disarmingly lucid; interspersed with sentences of striking beauty by their simplicity: “Difficulties don’t teach you resilience, they break your legs.” “” You have lived at a distance for too long, with no connection other than the memory of having walked at the same pace. ”
We could highlight many others throughout this rhythmic and elegant prose which follows in the footsteps of Naïma, a terrified young adult “whose existence comes down to ploys to avoid suffering”. Who dies out for a while in an office, rather than pursuing his artistic projects. Who seeks himself, lives the student strikes at the university, before losing faith in his studies then finally abandoning his baccalaureate and taking the road to go to the Magdalen Islands … and ends up return to where it started and get caught up in depression – “that of […] all women overwhelmed by a story bigger than themselves ”.
In front of her, in all these stages, her friend Delphine is never far away; the one with whom she grew up and played “terrible girls of the suburbs”, but who ultimately decides to take a path the opposite of hers.
In short, what is the definition of achievement? This is what Naïma seeks to discover throughout her wanderings, while trying to find what it means to become an adult and to give meaning to her artistic impulses.
In search of a refuge “where to return after the company of others”, of an anchor to find herself, Naïma gets lost before an unexpected hope finally opens a door for her: an artist’s residency in Iceland is arriving. like a new lease of life, as, at 32, she considered the possibility of never being able to accomplish anything worthwhile.
Like a sort of modern Sisyphus myth, this tale offers a snapshot of those youthful ideals that arise and revolt, before eventually submitting. And hints at a promising new feather, to follow.
Without refuge
Maryse Andraos
August horse
184 pages