The Swiss journalist slips into the skin of a young girl, a helpless witness to her father’s abuse.
“His favorite” is Emma, the eldest of his two daughters. It’s the one he prefers to violate when, as usual, he takes inexplicable outbursts of anger. Claire, the mother, cashes in as best she can. Emma puts her hands over her ears to escape. Jeanne, the youngest, ends up fleeing the house to try to get by. She falls in love, her heart beats for something other than fear, but she struggles with happiness or pleasure. They bump into her toxic father who polluted her personality. So, when a friend exclaims “Sex is life! she replies in her heart of hearts: “Me, I was born dead. »
Sarah Jollien-Fardel is haunted by death. “I think about it every day,” she says. A question of Catholic education, family suicides. It is an obsession among others, which we find in his first novel. It is violent, of course, but the most brutal scenes are built in our heads much more than in the words of the author. However, Jeanne’s story is not hers. Sarah Jollien-Fardel denies having ever suffered abuse of this kind.
The era of free speech is far from over
Sarah Jollien-Fardel
It is a patchwork of images constructed from the stories of battered women with whom she has volunteered for more than three years. From that of the brother and neighbor of his grandfather: “He raped all his daughters, his sons raped all their sisters. Everyone was watching, everyone knew everything,” she says. Finally, it is the reflection of an atmosphere, of an era. “A remote village before the 1970s when we were a woman, how can I tell you… We couldn’t talk much! eludes the journalist.
Even if she doesn’t like this term, it’s a kind of social novel that she draws in the background. Beyond the terrible intra-family story, what interests him is the attempt to emancipate a young woman. “His favorite” tells the trivialization of violence, silence too, as we enter today an era of freedom of speech “very far from over”, observes the one with whom the testimonies of readers flock to the dedications. All ages, all genders. Even this man came with his wife, to whom he finally dared to tell his story after fifty-two years of marriage. Even this woman she met the day before and who whispered her paternal secret to her in one breath: “You know, I was her favorite. »
“His favorite”, by Sara Hollien-Fardel, ed. Sabine Wespieser, 200 pages, 20 euros.
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DR