“We feel the hand of God there”

2023-08-15 16:19:07

“Who sees Groix sees his joy”, says a saying from the Lorient country. According to tradition, the sentence illustrated the relief of sailors seeing the island of Morbihan from their boat. Finally, after weeks of swell and roll, land was not far away. The author Lorraine Fouchet has taken up the expression and likes to sow it at the turn of a chapter, in several of her novels. But this time to express the emotion that seizes her characters when they land on this 8 km2 pebble, which the successful novelist has since made an anchor point to deploy her stories of love, family, friendships , of solidarity.

“This year, I wanted to take a step aside by setting my story in Lapland. I told myself that I would not wear Groix, but I couldn’t help it », she jokes. In Never there by chancehis 24th novel, one of the characters dreams of making his life there: “This island is simple, authentic, intense, he said. She accepts you or rejects you and I feel honored that she accepted me. »

Love at first sight for Groix

This sentence, Lorraine Fouchet could take it up on her own. Her heart beats for Groix for more than twenty years, since the day when, while still an emergency doctor for SOS Médecins, she discovered it, bought a house there and came to spend her first winter there. Groix is ​​2,500 inhabitants. A figure multiplied in the summer. So sharing something other than high season with them is a sign of belonging. “I’m not at home: the island belongs to the Groisillons. » She feels there despite everything “its rightful place” and made places a full character in his books.

In Facing the immense sea (2021), Lorraine Fouchet makes Fleur, her heroine, say that the port is “joyful, efficient, out of this world”. In Between sky and Lou (2016), she writes “that elsewhere, we breathe badly”. Everything is smaller but wider in Groix. The sky is a “starry caban that creates a protective bell”, explains the author. “We feel the hand of God there. There are no traffic jams, no red lights, no city frenzy, since everything is five minutes away. »

She also says that when the last boat connecting the floating rock to the mainland leaves, at the end of the day, after having embarked the day visitors, it is as if a drawbridge had been lifted, leaving the inhabitants between them. “You have a heart that beats when you arrive in Groix. And a little bit that tears when we leave. »

Real places and people

When she writes her novels, Lorraine Fouchet integrates real places (the Hôtel de la Marine, the main bookstore, the Grands Sables beach, “only convex beach in Europe”), slip the names of his relatives (Soaz, Jo). Some of her readers, or rather her female readers, when they visit the island and pass in front of the Saint-Tudy church, which she systematically describes, always raise their heads to observe its bell tower and the tuna that serves as a weather vane there. . “Groix is ​​addictive”observes one of his characters in Between sky and Lou.

Lorraine Fouchet confirms, the spirit often there. “I live part of the year in the Paris region, but with a car registered 56, she jokes. In the Yvelines, when I write, I describe the sea. In Groix, I see it, I feel it. The writing becomes deeper. People, stories, inspired by Groix, I have plenty of them until the end of my days. »

From there to consider oneself as Breton… “To be groisillon, you need four plaques in the cemetery. » Precisely, she would like to be cremated off Groix. “My friends know it. » She would like a mass in the village. “I can’t be in Groix as often as I would like now. But afterwards, I would like to be there all the time. »

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Two lives and novels

1956. Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. His father, Christian Fouchet was resistant and minister of General de Gaulle. It owes its first name to the cross of Lorraine.

1990. Publish Jeanne, homelesshis first novel (Éd. J’ai Lu) while at the same time working as an emergency doctor at Samu and SOS Médecins.

1996. Quits medicine after writing Marguerite Duras’ death certificate and decides to become a full-time writer.

1998.The Lighthouse of Zanzibar (Flammarion). For this novel, Lorraine Fouchet begins to take a close interest in Brittany.

2003.The Agency (Robert Laffont). 2003 press house awards.

Since 2014, Lorraine Fouchet’s novels are published by Éditions Héloïse d’Ormesson. The latest: Never there by chance (2023, 256 p., 21 €).