Anaïs Barbeau-LavaletteRecensioni

Canadese schrijfster die met haar gezin en vrienden naar het huis van haar jeugd gaat midden in de bossen tijdens de corona-periode.. prachtig geschreven boek, gedeeltelijk autobiografisch, zeker aan te raden voor iemand die van de natuur houdt. Het is nog niet in het Nederlands vertaald zover ik weet, jan 2024, Minder toegankelijk als haar eerste roman
Écrivain canadien qui se rend avec sa famille et ses amis dans la maison de son enfance au milieu des forêts pendant la période de la couronne. Belle écriture, en partie autobiographique, définitivement recommandé pour quelqu'un qui aime la nature. Il n'a pas encore été traduit en néerlandais à ma connaissance, janvier 2024. Moins accessible que son premier roman

Un roman dont j'avais beaucoup entendu parler et dont le sujet, l'abandon familial par la mère, m'intriguait...

Le contexte social et historique dans lequel le récit prend place est également digne d'intérêt. Suzanne Meloche, la grand-mère de l'auteure, aborde l'âge adulte dans le Québec des années 40 et 50. Elle fréquente le groupe des automatistes, Borduas, Gauvreau et Riopelle à l'époque de la signature du Refus global. Elle épouse Marcel Barbeau, qui deviendra aussi le père de ses deux enfants, qu'elle abandonnera pour ne jamais revenir.

La plume d'Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette tente de donner une âme à ce personnage dont l'absence est difficile à comprendre pour la famille. Quelle femme était-elle? Pourquoi a t'elle choisi de quitter sa famille, ses enfants? La petite fille de Suzanne Meloche a engagé une détective privée afin de retracer les faits et gestes de la vie de sa «grand-mère» absente. Son écriture très poétique tente de la rendre plus humaine.

Le récit est touchant et intriguant, mais personnellement, je suis demeurée un peu sur ma faim. L'écriture est superbe et très imagée, mais personnellement, en tant que lectrice plus «rationnelle», j'aurais apprécié plus de «concret». Pour ma part, c'est le contexte qui m'a fasciné!½

This is a work of fiction, based on fact. The author had a grandmother, Suzanne Meloche, who had abandoned the author's mother, Mousse, when Mousse was a small child. Upon her grandmother's death, the author hired a private detective to find out about her life. From this, as well as conversations with her mother, grandfather and uncle, the author wrote a fictionalized account of Suzanne's life.

Suzanne left her two young children in order to pursue a career in art and to fulfill her own dreams. She participated in, among other things, an avant-garde art movement in Quebec and in the civil rights march in the U.S. Her life was interesting, but not earth-shattering. And that is the tragedy of Suzanne's story. Had she been a man, or had she been born a generation or two later, she would not have had to abandon family life to achieve what she did. Her decision had multi-generational consequences.

The book is written in the second person, which makes it feel very personal -- like we are eavesdropping on very private events. What I liked most about the book is that it shows the power of art. The author didn't like her grandmother and did try to write a book justifying her choices. But she came to appreciate Suzanne in the process of writing about her. As she said, "I don't love you yet...but wait for me...I'm coming."

Although the Suzanne of the title is not the muse for Leonard Cohen's song I sense a kinship between that Suzanne and this one. This Suzanne (Suzanne Meloche) was in Montreal a generation before Cohen's Suzanne (Suzanne Verdal) but they both hung around on the fringes of artistic groups and they both led rather unconventional lives.

Suzanne Meloche was the author's maternal grandmother. She abandoned her children when her daughter was three and her son was one year old. After that Suzanne moved from place to place and man to man. She occasionally held down jobs, like as a mail carrier in the Gaspe region, but she would abandon them on a whim. She sometimes wrote poetry and she sometimes painted and her works were good enough to be printed and exhibited but she never stuck to that either. In the 1960s she was living in Harlem and she ended up on a bus travelling into the South to promote desegregation in the movement called The Freedom Riders. She and her fellow protesters were jailed in the notorious Parchman Jail. After that experience Suzanne went back to Montreal with a young Vietnam vet who eventually committed suicide. Suzanne occasionally reached out to her daughter but never her son. Her daughter, who had been raised by Suzanne's sisters, seemed to weather the abandonment fairly well but the son was mentally unstable all his life. The author only met her grandmother on two occasions and one was when she had just been born. Despite the estrangement between Suzanne and her children she made her daughter and her granddaughter the heirs in her will. The author and her parents went to Ottawa to clean out Suzanne's apartment after her death and the author found enough intriguing details to make her want to know more about her grandmother. So she hired a private investigator and this book is the result. It's probably not completely factual because details had to be made up by the author.

I'm not completely convinced of the merit of this book. Yes, Suzanne Meloche was an interesting subject but I'm not sure I understand her any better after reading this book. If she abandoned her children because she wanted to concentrate on her art then why did she never sustain her poetry or her painting? If she abandoned them because she felt they were too much of a burden then why did she occasionally try to get her daughter back? I personally wonder if she wasn't experiencing postpartum depression which was exacerbated by her husband's long absences while she tried to raise two young children in a hovel but that is not a theory the author examines. Obviously Suzanne's issues with parenting were not passed down to her daughter or her granddaughter. The author thanks six children for allowing her "to be both a mother and a writer".½

The imagined life of the author grandmother. The facts are reals, the places are real. The inner life and the motivation of Suzanne for leaving, always leaving are deduced, imagined. Suzanne Meloche lived through tumultuous times. The end of the Duplessis era, the art scene of the 50s. The emotional scars she left on herself, her children, her family are the backdrops of this well written semi-fictional biography. The almost dream like feel of the writing keeps you reading, keeps you interested and emotionally involved. A very good read.

Anaïs sieht ihre Großmutter nur einmal als Kind, als diese sie heimlich besuchen kommt und wieder davonschleicht. Jahre später wird sie sie mit ihrer Mutter nochmals aufsuchen, doch die Ablehnung der alten Frau ist deutlich und grausam. Sie will Tochter und Enkelin nie mehr sehen. Erst als Suzanne stirbt, wird Anaïs wieder ihre Wohnung betreten, dieses Mal entschlossen herauszufinden, wer diese Frau war. Suzanne Meloche wird 1926 in eine französischsprachige Familie im englischsprachigen Ottawa als eines von unzähligen Kindern geboren. Das Geld ist knapp, ebenso die Zuneigung der Eltern. Früh schon flieht sie aus dem Haus und schließt sich einer Gruppe von Malern, Bildhauern, Dichtern und Schauspielern an, entschlossen, die Welt zu verändern. Doch auch dort bleibt sie Außenseiterin und so wird sie ihr Leben lang auf der Flucht und der Suche sein, nach ihrem Platz.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette zeichnet das Bild einer nicht nur einsamen, sondern auch immer gehetzten Frau nach. Niemand scheint Suzanne das geben zu können, was sie braucht. Die Mutter verwehrt ihr die Zuneigung, nach der sie sich sehnt. Das Klavier im elterlichen Haus, das eine magische Anziehung auf sie ausübt und das sie so gerne zum Erklingen gebracht hätte, bleibt für sie ein Tabu. Die Faszination, die die Freigeister und Künstler auf sie ausüben, ist leicht nachvollziehbar, jetzt scheint das Leben möglich, von dem sie so lange geträumt hat. Doch der Alltag holt sie ein, der Lebensunterhalt muss finanziert werden, bald auch schon die erste Tochter und die Zeit ist noch nicht reif für fortschrittliche Gedanken.

Suzanne irrt durch die Welt, nachdem sie ihre Kinder und den Mann verlassen hat. Doch weder in Europa noch bei den Rassekämpfen in den USA kann sie das finden, was sie sucht. Sie bleibt ihr Leben lang eine Frau auf der Flucht. Erst 1980 werden ihre Gedichte unter dem Titel Aurores fulminantes veröffentlicht, nachdem die Künstlergruppe Automatistes sich schon längst aufgelöst hat und ihr jedes Interesse an öffentlichem Ruhm fehlt. Der Originaltitel der Biographie „La femme qui fuit“ ist deutlich aussagekräftiger als nur der Vorname wie in der deutschen Ausgabe. Insgesamt ein lesenswerter Bericht über das Leben einer von der Geschichte vergessenen Frau.

What an original book. This is about the life of the author's grandmother, written from the author's perspective, imagining what her grandmother was living through, based on what the author was able to find out about her. The chapters are generally very short and much of it is written in the second person ("tu"), as though written to the grandmother.

The main character, Suzanne Meloche, was associated with an important group of Quebec artists. We learn that she grew up in Ottawa during the depression and came back to Ottawa later in life (in this sense, this book is as much about Franco-Ontarians as it is about Quebecois). The event that dominates the book, though, is Meloche's abandonment of her two children (including the author's mother) when they are young children.

One of the interesting aspects of this book is the border between novel and biography, as this is all based on a real person's life but with all sorts of blanks speculatively filled in.½

En un campo de refugiados palestino de Cisjordania, Chloé, una joven canadiense, cuida a mujeres embarazadas. Su relación con personas que se hallan a ambos lados de los muros y puntos de control del campo, hará cambiar sus creencias y convicciones.