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Liane often wonders why she does not feel completely like a girl. “That’s because there aren’t any men living in your house” says her friend Roselyne. Indeed, Liane’s world is a woman’s world, in which women have seen men depart without regret or resentment and have learned to live without them. As the novel unravels, and the characters trade life, needs and sorrows, it evokes a gentle version of “Cries and Whispers”. Christine, Liane’s mother, stops working and drifts slowly into depression. Liane takes charge of her; she becomes the mother of her mother with the help of Eva, the cleaning lady. Then Huguette, Liane’s grand-mother, reappears and starts to take care of Christine. It is as if the strength of the one was the weakness of the other – a kind of solidarity written in the flesh. Their other link is the TV-series Dallas, which episodes they all follow – even Liliane, the great grand-mother who barely survives in her retirement home; even Ghania, the silent and submissive wife of Hassan the grocer. Le corps de Liane is a magnificent book. The author recounts Liane’s youth with the fondness and lucidity of an invisible older sister, following her as she travels the natural path towards femininity and becomes conscious, through the grace of a child and the guidance of a friend, of her own beauty.
Cypora Petitjean-Cerf was born in 1974. In 2005, she published an essay, L’école de la dernière chance, un an en classe-relais, and a novel, Le musée de la Sirène, with Stock.
L'auteur
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