Geneviève Brisac and her sources

“What do you do with the words of others in your life? Are there artists, writers, authors, whose words follow you, haunt you, push you and carry you? How do we feed on the work of a stranger, of a foreigner to build oneself, to blossom and, why not, to affirm oneself? Writing books is to build immense bridges, between centuries, backgrounds and languages, c is to carry within itself the language of a woman or a man whom we will never know, and who nevertheless, through his books, seems to know us so well.
Last September, Geneviève Brisac published her letters to Virginia Woolf: she writes to the author how important, radical and necessary her texts, her thoughts, her ideas were in her life. In addition, Geneviève Brisac has been publishing novels for adults and children, essays and plays for nearly thirty years. She received the Prix Fémina in 1996 for Sea hunting weekend. She was the flagship editor of the school of leisure until 2016 and her voice, today, in the literary and editorial space, is fundamental.
Geneviève Brisac arranged to meet me in a cozy place that smells of tea and hot chocolate: l’Heure gourmande, in Paris, in a small passage in the sixth arrondissement. It’s barely two degrees outside, so what a joy to snuggle up on the first floor of this tea room in the heart of Paris. For an hour we discuss what it means, to write and publish, to transmit and to receive.”

Cecile Coulon

“Writing is an adventure, we discover resources and thoughts that we did not expect” Genevieve Brisac

The Café The gourmet hour where Geneviève Brisac likes to write

© Radio France
– Cécile Coulon and Fanny leroy

The sorrow of loving, Geneviève Brisac, Editions de l’Olivier (Extract)

“It’s my oldest memory.
My mother at her machine. A black Remington. Her red fingernails. The noise.
Tock tock tock tock. And then the noise of the trolley brought back curtly from right to left. And again, tac tac tac tac.
Don’t disturb your mother. She works. Tock tock tock tock.
When a sheet is covered with words, she tears it off and introduces two others, separated by a carbon.
Scrouitch.
Above all, don’t disturb her. The machine is his true love. (…)
Mélini writes soap operas for RTL, radio plays called drama. She writes detective series, adaptations of Agatha Christie. She writes to write, she writes all the time.
She invents an imaginary city, fills it with its inhabitants, embroiders their loves, their betrayals, their jealousies. The women are called Sylvie, Patricia, Cécile. The men are named François or Philippe. It tells of a France of the sixties, suburban and family. The soap opera is successful. A dream.
Perhaps, said Mélini, melancholy, I blacked out all these pages only to escape something. But what ?
And she pushes the cart, wham, and she hits. Tock tock tock tock. »