Back to school. “The hideous” plunges into the two-sèvres in the fifties and in the story of a woman who abandons husband and children

With the hideous, Reine Bellivier signs a first novel on a married woman, mother of three children, who, overnight, disappears without a word. For example, Published in this literary school year in September, the novel immerses us in the two-Sèvres in the 1950s.

What prompted Marguerite to abandon the next day husband and children, at the turn of the 1950s? Consequently, In his novel The hideous (Christian back school. “the hideous” plunges Bourgois Editory) Which appears in this September school year in September (and already in the running for the Stanislas Prize for the first novel 2025). Furthermore, the Nantes Reine Bellivier offers an intriguing story that plunges the reader into the two-sevree bocage of his childhood. From the outset. the narrator of this singular novel warns: “There is only a huge vacuum from an immense emptiness around an unforgivable act and some ones.” She continues, by addressing her mother who were the years before: “From your intentions, I don’t know”.

Interview with Reine Bellivier on The hideous (Christian Bourgois Editor) – Journalist: Clément Massé. Team: Stéphane Bourin, Jérémy Capelier, Lionel Letessier, Dominique Moreno, Maxime Monichon, Jennifer Russeil.

From this apparent emptiness. an investigation of the intimate order in which the narrator will try to understand her mother’s discreet epic begins by carefully reconstituting the snippets of her life reaching her. These are most back school. “the hideous” plunges often only a few words slipped here or there by relatives. These are also sometimes gestures. sounds that she captures and which draw the contours of this mother who left only mystery behind her. There was a lover, we learn, perhaps a sailor by profession. Between a few factual elements that the narrator sometimes struggles to meet to ensure their veracity. appears an era and her rules and the atmospheres that she imagines out of a Simenon novel, such as “Moments when there is not much going on in life, but where it happens, in fact, a lot”. Because the reconstruction of her mother’s life that the narrator also goes through these moments. “interludes”, of which end up breaking small, but powerful, revelations.

He remains at the narrator her sensitive approach. her readings which allow her to understand and imagine what her mother experienced

Reine Bellivier

Novelist

The intimate investigation back school. “the hideous” plunges system set up by Reine Bellivier finds an exciting echo in texts from literature regularly cited at the start of the chapter: Albert Camus, Nancy Huston, Alice Munro for the best known, and texts of sociology. Understand Marguerite. this hideous, it is opening up to a section of life “who is not documented”that of a woman from an invisible social class. “To trace these lives that disappear fairly quickly. in a generation, [la narratrice] Try to rely on his own memories, on on-said, even the gossip of the surroundings around a taboo of the departure of this mother and she still has her sensitive approach and her readings which allow her to understand (…) [et] Imagine what his mother experienced “explains Reine Bellivier.

Built around three also plausible versions of Marguerite’s life. the novel confronts tracks, possibilities and, without favoring one version rather than another, strengthens with force and determination to back school. “the hideous” plunges let the essential emerge: the nature of this woman left without explanation to live her life, exhumed thanks to a meticulous work of archaeologist, which appears in all its finesse and complexity, when closing the book.

The hideousby Reine Bellivier (Christian Bourgois Editor), 20 euros. In bookstores on August 21, 2025.