La Gaiete

BEING CHEERFUL
Rights sold to Poland (Sonia Draga)
"It was when I became pregnant that I decided to stop being sad once and for all, and by whatever means I could." Louise, the narrator of Justine Lévy's eagerly awaited new book, has all the doubts, anxieties, fretfulness, melancholy, cold sweats and violent fears that she had in the author's previous novels. She stumbles through life, feeling blue in her soul and black in her heart, relying on "mumanddad" for support, tripping over and picking herself up. Sadness clings to her and drags her down. Until the day when... Louise, the daughter of a tragically damaged mother and an over-loved father, finds she is carrying her husband Pablo's baby. How to love our children? Too much, not enough, too hard, too intensely? And what should we pass on to them? That is the powerful, universal subject of this real-life-novel, a subject of downfall and hope that we all know: about how children are central to your lives. It is also only now that this young adult herself still immersed in childhood becomes a mother. Through smiles, regrets, tears, irritations, the tiny setbacks of everyday life, as well as family secrets and a Cinderella-style stepmother who looms up from the past, Louise tames this life of hers as if it were a gentle caress.
Justine Lévy is the author of Rendez-vous (Plon, 1995) and Mauvaise fille (Stock, 2009) and Rien de grave (Stock, 2004), translated into 17 languages.