a family tragedy told by Véronique Ovaldé in a surprisingly shaped novel

Véronique Ovaldé takes the reader to a Mediterranean island in a family tragedy full of mysteries, through the voice of an omnipresent narrator.

Véronique Ovaldé tells in this latest novel published by Flammarion on January 4, the story of an island family, marked by the disappearance of the youngest, one carnival night. The novelist hooks the reader with a theatrical and ironic narration, which puts her story in abyss.

The story : after fifteen years away from her family, Aïda returns to Iazzia, the island of her childhood, which we imagine is located off the coast of Sicily, to bury her father, Salvatore Salvatore, “said the old man” or “His Lordship”. Aïda is number three in a family of four girls. Violetta, Gilda, Aïda, and Mimi, these first names, girls owe them to their father’s passion for opera, “one of those sullen, angry men who only regain a semblance of enthusiasm by listening to Verdi”. After the tragedy, he will no longer speak to his daughter Aïda, however “the favorite”.

The drama is the disappearance during the night of the carnival of her little sister Mimi, for which she is held responsible, and which once led to exile in Palermo from Aida. On her return to the island, her mother Silvia takes her for Mimi the disappeared, whom she has not given up after all her years of waiting. Her two other sisters, Violetta and Gilda, the eldest, welcome her coldly.

Aïda reconnects with Leonardo, who was her lover at the beginning of her exile in Palermo, since then her brother-in-law, the husband of Violetta, her sister. The very one she once watched, “angry”seated “on a stone bench“. On the program of this stay, the burial of the old man, the visit to the notary, and above all a great flashback for Aïda, brought back fifteen years in contact with the lands and protagonists of her childhood.

Her memory leads her to the origins of this family, with the arrival of the father on the island at the age of 21, hired as a gardener beekeeper in the house of a countess, “La Demoiselle”, “La Gandolfi “, in whose service Silvia works, whom he will marry.

What happened to Mimi during that carnival night when Aïda had taken her on her nocturnal runaway, an expedition formally forbidden by the father? It is this mystery that this new novel by the author of The Grace of the Brigands (L’Olivier, 2013).

mise en abyme

Through this pull-out novel, the novelist dissects family relationships, the secrets she carries, the passions at play there, from love to hatred, through jealousy, duplicity, guilt or revenge. . Véronique Ovaldé also explores the different paths that everyone tries to clear within this cell that structures life, here in a context made even more acute because struck by a tragedy. An island, a carnival: the sets support this idea of ​​a cloistered madness between invisible walls often erected around the ecosystem that is the family.

The whole story of this family frozen in misfortune by the tragedy of the disappearance of the youngest is told from the point of view of Aida, the culprit, but not only. Aside, reflections on the characters and the situations, on the narration itself, Véronique Ovaldé unfolds her story through the voice of an indeterminate but omnipresent narrator (the novelist?), who explains, comments, glosses to the point of gossip.

These stage directions applied to the novel, slipped between parentheses or not, put the story into abyss, marking a permanent distance from the facts. If the process surprises, even annoys a little at first, we quickly end up adhering to this narration, which gives a theatrical, ironic, even casual tone to this family story, without however removing its tragic dimension and its mystery. An interesting and surprising read.

Angry girl on a stone bench, by Véronique Ovaldé (Flammarion 320 p., €21, digital €15)

Extract :

“- I thought of taking you home first. You can relax, shower, change, rest before we go to see mum. Anyway, it’s time for her nap. We’ll go to her house later.
Their mother therefore now takes a nap.
And Violetta adds, but everything is in a mess – impossibility of prioritizing information, haste and panic:
– Now mom lives in the Big House. We thought it would make you happy to sleep there. It’s still so beautiful. You will love.
Aida looks at her sister, questioning. Ah good ? I will love sleeping in the Big House? She tells herself that she will have to stop perceiving innuendo in each of Violetta’s words. But it is difficult. It will require a focus adjustment. She fears for a moment that each phrase formulated is doubled by a phantom phrase. This is probably the rule in all families. Everything that is really said is never said.”Angry girl on a stone benchp. 58)