The sun of others, the cruelty of immobility

With The sun of otherswe dive into the life of a woman born in the last century, since Rural France. In this postwar campaign, Henriette, who was once predicted to have a career as a teacher, is constraint to reconnect with this peasant environment from which she had distanced herself, under the tutelage of her husband Adrien who decided to abandon his career as a policeman in Germany to return to the village. The whole story of her tells of her regrets born of deep frustration as well as the sufferings suffered by her mother in a detestable environment, in the company of a husband and a small son who weigh her down …

” Adrien is no longer her executioner. For a moment Henriette would almost accuse herself of being too hard on him. The texture of her skin, her voice unravels. Henriette herself will soon, surely, survive only in her memory … Her loneliness makes the widow’s feet icy, her hands frozen. He paralyzes her from shoulders to her heels. Unable to sit on the edge of the bed, Henriette turns over, like a log, once she finds herself on the floor. She regrets, between two sobs, the turn her life has taken. Her colors almost fade under her lids. Gray puts them at half mast. Nothing monopolizes the hours of aimless waiting, this limbo between forced labour, dying of fatigue, and her sleep, even more punctured than in the past. »

The child, François, of five years whoever thinks like a young adult hears only reproaches and suffers a certain amount of abuse from this mother who never stops making him bring the goblet of her failed emancipation… ” Her son, also so little understood, still hasn’t seen that his mother died from not being able to share the sun with others. Moments of sharing and complicity with a dishonest father are rare. But thanks to Chantal, a classmate, François still manages to grow up contemplating a mean world which bears little resemblance to him. With this friend he protects himself from the hateful and ferocious troublemakers who are the Puidroneaux brothers.

” Chantal immediately took”little Sauget“under his protection. He tells him what he knows. She insists on warning him. The father, Arthur Puidroneaux, is very rude. He found his amusing wife among the shorns of the Liberation. Francesco doesn’t know what the word is”publication”, he needs an image that enlightens him. He also doesn’t know what this mowed story is about. Kind or stupid, he lets Chantal continue. »

Because it really is a tragedy what is taking place, everything precipitates, as the reader fears… The unsaid and the tribulations of the three families (Sauget family, Feuillard family, Puidronneaux family) articulate and punctuate the scenario of village life. The climate is violent and medieval in the country of peasant characters, and the humor of the patois language fails to make one forget the misogyny of men and the cruelty of the mother, decidedly devoid of affection. Terrible and poignant are the scenes of the execution of pets (a cat and the young hero’s dog).

The portraits of mother and child are beautifully portrayed and very well written. One wonders what buried suffering (domination, rejection, rape) can thus transform a human being into an executioner. The reader is wholeheartedly with this child who bears his pain, who takes the beatings and spends his time hiding his tears. In the throes of an existential and spiritual quest, he will eventually become a seminarian.

We cannot leave this story by Pierre Perrin without feeling a certain emotion. The greenery and the description of the scenes in the heart of an acrid and harsh countryside are magnificent, as are the stylistic flashes.

A novel to be put in everyone’s hands, to salute its rigor and great beauty.

” Stuck in an era, Henriette survives, persists, suffers, lets herself be overwhelmed by anger, without anyone realizing that her aborted dreams have broken her. »

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