Mother

This is a collection of three narratives that contaminate each other because their aim is to tell just one story: that of a Trinity made up of Andrée, Robert and the son.
This son takes us from his own birth to his mother's death, describing the construction of a family of sorts, one that holds together despite dramatic explosions, differences and frictions. Also in spite of Andrée's beliefs and visions. Because it is Andrée - a volcano of a woman, besotted with freedom and fuelled by passion - who traces the common destiny. The son has seen her flee, carried away by imaginary loves, but has always seen her come back. He has seen her as an inspired healer and medium but also as a variety singer, a modern woman, a leader with a mission, an insurrectionist, and always capable. He has seen her loved by Robert, the rock of a man whose life is marked by serial bereavement but who is nevertheless the lynchpin of this unusual family set-up. The son did not witness the final fall, he could have anticipated it and heard the refrain, the "Hello one and all!" that Andrée used as if referring to a threat... which, on this occasion, it really was.
Haunted by a sense of imminent tragedy, Mother uses the present tense and three different axes, Love Life, Nourishment and War Time, to reveal a clan-like trajectory as much as an unpredictable family. It offers a portrait of madness which gives the writing its tremendous energy and sense of necessity, and catches the reader out with its tenderness and redemptive laughter.
Luc Lang is the author of nearly a dozen novels, collections of short stories and essays on contemporary art and literature. These include Mille six cents ventres (winner of the 1998 Goncourt des Lycéens), La fin des paysages (2006), Cruels 13 (2008) and Esprit chien (2010).