2024-01-03 17:09:19
Truly, Alice
by Tiffany Tavernier
Sabine Wespieser, 286 p., €22.
“The diocesan association of Paris is recruiting an assistant for the promotion of the causes of the saints. » You no longer know which way to turn when applying for such a job. This is what happens to Alice, cornered, forced by her authoritarian companion to find work. For five years, she has shared her life with this manipulative, selfish and brutal man. He cut her off from her family, from all social life, destroying all plans. “When will you understand that I do everything for you? », he insists, holding his prey in hellish blackmail. Since he needs money, Alice has no other option: she must work, whatever the cost. She, who is not even baptized, presents herself, and finds herself miraculously hired by the bishop in charge of canonization files.
It is to please her toxic companion that she accepts this obscure work of which she knows nothing: it involves collecting hundreds of documents and testimonies proving the heroic virtues of the venerable people and servants of God. A colossal and secret work, for a good cause. If Alice’s life is a novel, the evocation of the candidates for sainthood of the diocese of Paris, in this book, is very real and documented. Jacques Fesch, Nicolas Barré, Raoul Follereau, but also – less known – Henri Chaumont, Georges Darboy and others, whose lives are dissected throughout a long and complex procedure. So many little-known figures, told in a few pages, missionaries or archbishops, forgotten prophets or founders of religious orders.
To venture into the mysteries of holiness, Alice finds support among the good souls of the diocese, Anne-So, Charlotte, Isabelle. Although they welcome him warmly, it does not take long for them to understand that their new colleague is going through personal hell. Generous, Alice is no less systematically denigrated by her companion in misfortune, prisoner of “this feeling she has of never being good enough, of always making mistakes.” Work opens a way out for him: “Something is coming loose. Or rather dissolves. His anxiety perhaps. Something that saddens and warms her at the same time. » Freeing yourself from the daily grip is in itself a challenge: “What possessed me to swallow everything? He took everything from me. We loved each other so much. There is nothing left of me. »
Attending future blessed people can only strengthen Alice in this vital burst, she who would like to save the world: “ What we call heroicity is the constancy and humility that this person has demonstrated throughout their life (…). This is the criterion that distinguishes true saints from those who can act with great generosity, but only in fits and starts, according to their mood. »
From the lives of future Parisian saints and the painful existence of a woman at the end of her tether, Tiffany Tavernier manages to create a dense, breathtaking novel. A tour de force when she weaves the edifying life of the blessed, the violence of marital influence. Two angles which nevertheless come together, with the imperative question which runs through the book: what meaning can self-sacrifice have? How far can love take? “It is only from the moment when man sees the forces of darkness at work that he realizes how the forces of light are also at work. »
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