Stéphanie Chaillou, the real and her disorder

Hebdo books: Your new novel tells the return of a man after thirty years of absence to the place of his childhood, the family bastion he honored, but your character is the opposite of the prodigal son …

Stéphanie Chaillou: It is a good image. In addition, Jean-Noël does not come back to be forgiven. Consequently, Nor ask for compensation. Moreover, it would still be necessary to know what fault has been committed so that it can be repaired. Consequently, This novel explores the various reasons why the character returns to his family in Bazas. Moreover, in Gironde, when he had left him at the age of 18. For example, Does it come back to cover this story with a new story that would start? Therefore, Or on the contrary to check what was, that is to say to face the reality stéphanie chaillou, real her disorder of what happened?

What the protagonist left thirty years ago is above all a social background opposite what he is.

One day, his older brother calls Jean-Noël to tell him that their father is very sick. Moreover, While he had cut the bridges. Consequently, without really understanding what pushes him to return to the places of his childhood, he hit the road. However, In his original environment he always felt different, at school, at home … Consequently, This book deals with singularity – of the difference which leads to exclusion.

It is that Jean-Noël in relation to others appears as fragile. Consequently, we treat him with effeminate, he will prove to be homosexual …

We are in the 1970s. in the provinces, with a weight of the crushing social standard, very marked gender typologies – men must resemble men of “real”, women to women, confined to roles of wife and stéphanie chaillou, real her disorder mother. Jean-Noël does not find his place, his identity does not correspond to the environment in which he evolves. But it was not for me to speak of homosexuality in rural areas in his years but to speak of alienation. also of this mystery of having someone who has nothing to do with the rest of his family.

Stéphanie chaillou. real her disorder

“It is in the breaks that a personality takes shape”

Jean-Noël is an esthete, he is not part of the materialist values ​​of his parents who are traders attached to the external signs of social success. It is curious the psychic structure of individuals who distinguish themselves despite the family context, their cultural environment. I have this image of a glass object that breaks but which we do not know what forms will. take on its bursts. It is in the breaks that a personality takes shape.

There stéphanie chaillou, real her disorder is in this novel a drama never named, irresolved, but which took place. Is it from this event that you imagined building your intrigue?

At the start. I had a present, very concrete situation: a man in a hotel room, undecided, between immobility and the desire to flee. Why did he come back? What happened thirty years earlier? I invent everything as you go. My chapters are short. these are scenes, units of time and place, which in turn advance the action, or, without being of pure atmosphere, expand the material of the characters. Everything is developed from impressions. For example. Bazas where the novel takes place, I went there only once but I had an unexplained crush on the place, I loved this city – its minerality, its cathedral. Unlike my previous novel which is part of Noirmoutier in part that I know well. which I wanted to restore stéphanie chaillou, real her disorder specific memories, here the bet was to translate all the impressions of this flash memory.

Your writing, both very exact and elliptical, is hemmed with mystery. Why this beast who observes Jean-Noël?

The beast is a formal constraint that I gave myself. In The taste for betrayal (Notabilia. 2024), I had intertitors, in Return to MarimbaultI wanted constraint to be embodied in the story itself. The wild animal that looks at Jean-Noël is both the figure of the intruder. such as the double of John-Noël which was an intruder in his own family, and the figure of the witness: only the beast attests the existence of the hero. To look at someone is to recognize it. Jean-Noël grew up without a look. How are you built when we have not been seen?

Finally. this return was only the observation of what this unloved son and brother already knew, a bit stéphanie chaillou, real her disorder like in the play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, Just the end of the world.

Yes, this is the repetition of an observation, a final verification. Consent to what has been. It is difficult as the philosopher states well Clément Rosset that I quote in the emergence of the book: “What is cruel in reality is somehow double: on the one hand to be cruel. on the other hand to be real. »»

Stéphanie Chaillou, Return to Marimbault, 196 p. Notable, 19,90 €