Book – La Folie Elisa

Book – La Folie Elisa

Author: Gwenaëlle Aubry

Rating: 7/10

Year: 2018

Publisher: Mercure de France

ISBN 978-2-7152-4850-2

Pages: 141

Language : French 

Inside, L. couldn't take it anymore, knowing them knocking on the door and resonating in his brain like the sounds of drums. Who, you ask? Emy, Irini, Sarah and Ariane. These four women leave the Stage - each her own - and flee.

This review contains crude and possibly triggering content.

Emy Manifold is an English rock star; Irini Santoni, a Greek sculptor, Sarah Zygalski, a dancer from Berlin and Ariane Sile, a French actress. Each one tells a part of their story, with multiple existential searches: those of loss, emptiness, abandonment, and above all of who they are, each having been lost following one or more traumas, which led them towards various addictions - to career, to meetings, sometimes also to substances.

These women are welcomed into a house (that of the main narrator), each has her own room in which to recompose the figures of her life.

Despite their different Stage lives, they share the art of inner escape; the one which led them towards forms of loss of person, threatening each of them during this period, between January 2015 and January 2016; but are also connected by an enigmatic graffiti, SMA, whose meaning is never elucidated, but one or two possible meanings are given.

Their stories are intertwined with snippets of period sociopolitical information (in the Camera Obscura mini-chapters), the outer fury of the world, as reflections of their respective inner worlds.

The novel is quite raw, recounting romantic encounters and lovemaking with their respective men in the same breath as their traumas, stage lives and personal impacts on the world around them.

Two of them have really difficult stories to read and personal triggers: they both survived attacks, Emy at the Bataclan, where she used to give concerts, and Sarah at the Lion's Gate in Jerusalem.

From this reading experience, I therefore warn you if this subject is difficult for you to read.

In addition to the triggers and the crude aspects of the novel, I had difficulty reading it because of the narrative style, most often with long sentences, which follow one another with little punctuation - as if the respective narrators were giving everything a flow of rapid words, without leaving time to breathe, analyze, or get feedback from the person listening to them.

In fact, with a clear head, I find this logical: having also experienced trauma, I had long periods of my life, where I poured out my words as soon as I had the opportunity, for fear that I would lose my momentum, and/or being interrupted.

Despite the hassles with this reading, which I had reported as mixed and difficult, I realize that my initial assessment was therefore erroneous. Also, I must point out that the novel also leaves me thinking about the possibility that the four women do not represent separate people, with experiences that are both similar but different in detail, but who knows, maybe they are just one representation of a single person, the narrator, this mysterious L. who hears the knocks against her door, resonating in her brain: but if, after all, this was only an image of a person whose traumas are numerous and need to divide them to “better” understand, not to be overwhelmed by them?

After all, not only does this beginning remind me of it, but also the narration of each woman seems to have only one voice, as if they weren't really differentiated?!

And if they are supposed to be four different people, telling, why not, to L. who receives them at the beginning, sends them each to their room, then listens to them without pause, without questions or answers, and watches them leave at the end , either the author decided on a very similar voice by choice - different women, sharing stage life, trauma, losses, and new beginnings once the novel is finished, or else, it would be a narrative error - or again , my own filters have lumped them together, these women, but would another reader see it differently? I let you discover - but you'll need to be francophone, as the novel doesn't seem to have any translated version, as of yet. 

PS this second book from 2024 and January, helps with the challenges Marianne (French author) and Incognito (cover without characters) taken this month at the Club de Lecture en Eau Douce, at LucieBulle.

It is also the 3rd consecutive book completed, having a blue cover, without having done so on purpose.