EXPRESSING FEELINGS
“My mother died last summer. The ground slipped from under my feet. I lost my bearings as much as I did my mother. Having already lost my two daughters, death is prowling once more. I’m suffering but can’t say so, my mother always forbade it. A secretive, restrained, immured, upright, dignified woman who loathed illness and hospitals. For herself or for anyone else. Did she love her children? Obviously. Did she tell them so? No. Did she ever kiss them? Not sure. How many unspoken words leapt up between propriety and impropriety? Luminous childhood memories bursting like bubbles. This book is more than introspection or therapy, it is a homage from a man who has gone back to being a little boy.”
Patrick Poivre d’Arvor
On 16th July 2011 the writer and journalist Patrick Poivre d’Arvor lost his mother, Madeleine-France. In his urgent need to express his grief and love for his late mother, he has written this sincere, measured text that cuts to the quick of his emotions. This book takes its natural place alongside the two devastating texts addressed to his daughter Solenn, Lettres à l’absente and Elle n’était pas d’ici.
Patrick Poivre d’Arvor presented the Antenne 2 news from 1976 to 1983, then the 8pm news on TF1 from 1987 to 2008. Since 2008 he has been presenting a weekly TV programme for France 5, “La traversée du miroir”, and a monthly one for Arte, “Horizons lointains”. He is also a writer and has had some fifty books published. His most notable works include L’irrésolu (2000, winner of the Prix Interallié), Un enfant (2001, winner of the Livre de Poche Readers’ Prize) and Fragment d’une femme perdue (2010).
« Ma mère est morte cet été. Le sol s’est dérobé sous mes pieds. J’ai perdu mes repères, tout autant que ma mère. Après la disparition de mes deux filles, la mort rôde une nouvelle fois. J’ai du chagrin, mais je ne peux pas le dire, ma mère me l’a toujours interdit. Une femme secrète, retenue, emmurée, droite, digne, qui détestait la maladie et l’hôpital. Pour elle comme pour les autres. A-t-elle aimé ses enfants ? Évidemment. Le leur a-t-elle dit ? Non. Les a-t-elle jamais embrassés ? Pas sûr. Combien de non-dits qui auront surgi entre pudeur et impudeur ? Des souvenirs lumineux d’enfance qui éclatent comme des bulles. »
Plus qu’une introspection, qu’une thérapie, ce livre est l’hommage d’un homme redevenu petit garçon.
Patrick Poivre D’Arvor
L'auteur
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