Welcome to the first stop on a blog tour for The Confidant by Hélène Grémillon. Hélène will be taking part in different features on various blogs this week, starting right here. To get things going, I’ll repost my review of The Confidant from earlier in the month.
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Hélène Grémillon’s first novel begins in Paris of 1975, where Camille Werner is sorting through the letters of condolence she has received on the death of her mother. One of the letters stands out: an account from someone named Louis of his childhood attraction to Annie, a girl from his village. Not knowing anyone named Louis or Annie, Camille thinks no more of this – until she starts receiving regular letters from Louis, telling more of his story.
Camille learns that Annie became friends with one Madame M., a rich young woman who came to the village with her husband, eventually (as Annie told Louis when they met again a few years later, during the war) agreeing to act as a surrogate mother for the infertile Madame M. Events would subsequently take a tragic turn, and prove to be far more relevant to Camille than she had thought.
The full story of The Confidant takes shape only gradually, as we view the past from the perspectives of different characters. Madame M. kept Alice indoors during her pregnancy, and didn’t tell her about the Nazi invasion of France – but we’re forced to re-evaluate what we think of these individuals when we read Madame M.’s testimony. The final revelations come as Grémillon’s novel turns to poetry, as though prose is no longer sufficient (or can no longer be trusted) to tell this story. All in all, The Confidant is an intriguing piece of work.
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Hélène has kindly answered a few questions about her novel:
Can you tell me about some of the non-literary influences on The Confidant?
I love the theatre. Living in Paris, I’m lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a huge and beautiful range of shows, there’s always something to see. I often go to concerts as well, classical or otherwise. I love musical theatre, in London or Broadway, as sadly, it’s not a very “French” genre. I never say no to an exhibition, but I’m very careful about when I visit them, as I don’t like it when the rooms are too busy, and even less the queues. Finally, I watch a lot of films on DVD!
What was the seed of the novel? Which came first, the decision to set The Confidant in its particular time periods, the idea of someone receiving letters about the past – or something else entirely?
The first thing I wanted to write about was a conflict between two women. That was really the starting point for The Confidant. Afterwards came the idea of a family secret, and from there came the letters and at last, the historical context. It all had to work well with my plot.
You use a number of different formats in the book – the short alternating chapters when Camille is reading Louis’s letters about Annie; the long monologue of Madame M.’s testimony; poetry at the end. How did you arrive at this technique?
I wanted the story to show different points of view. I therefore started by distributing the body of the story amongst the letters, and then I wrote the long monologue which sheds a new light on things. As for the end, the format imposed itself as I was writing the passage, and I kept it!
Who are some of your favourite writers?
There are many of them, and they depend on the time period. Shakespeare, Proust, Victor Hugo, Jean Anouilh, Stefan Sweig, Maupassant, Fred Vargas, John Irving, and I’ve recently discovered Jonathan Safran Foer, whose writing style I admire.
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Thanks to Hélène for taking the time to respond. The Confidant blog tour continues tomorrow at Novelicious, which will feature Hélène’s writing room. Then, on Wednesday, Stu at Winston’s Dad will be reviewing The Confidant and asking Hélène about her favourite books.
Hélène Grémillon’s first novel begins in Paris of 1975, where Camille Werner is sorting through the letters of condolence she has received on the death of her mother. One of the letters stands out: an account from someone named Louis of his childhood attraction to Annie, a girl from his village. Not knowing anyone named Louis or Annie, Camille thinks no more of this – until she starts receiving regular letters from Louis, telling more of his story.
The Harmattan is a trade wind that carries dust from the Sahara across West Africa; an analogous harshness and suffocation blows into the life of Gavin Weston’s protagonist, Haoua Boureima. Young Haoua lives in Watada, a village in the Republic of Niger, and dreams of becoming a teacher. But her family life is disrupted when her beloved soldier brother Abdelkrim visits and argues with their father over the latter’s gambling habit. Then Haoua’s mother is taken to hospital in the capital, and diagnosed with AIDS – and the girl’s world begins to fall apart, culminating in the marriage in which we see her (aged twelve) in the prologue.
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