PORTRAIT – In his latest book, the writer, close to the Macrons, puts himself in the shoes of a mother faced with the departure of her last son’s home. A maternal love story inspired by her experience.
“To my mother.” The dedication of Philippe Besson’s last book, The Last Child (Julliard), as well as the two quotations which are highlighted there (one by Marguerite Duras, the other by Léo Ferré), announce the color from the first pages. In this twentieth novel, the writer puts himself in the shoes of a mother faced with the departure of her last son’s home. Maternal love, an intimate and universal theme that he manages to transcribe with talent, he who nevertheless moved forward in life with two certainties: that he would not marry (he nevertheless entered into a PACS with his companion) and that he would not have children.
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Those who don’t like it or like to put people in boxes will readily imagine that “This tiny tragedy, this ordinary drama” takes place in a dysfunctional family, in a big bohemian apartment in eastern Paris. But no … Besson relates a “History at the level of men”, in an undetermined average town in France and within a family
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