EXPECTING
"There are lots of children who are never born, and adults who have not been brought into this world. Death has closed the eyes of the lost and opened those of the survivors, so that both are now perfectly lucid. I wish I were a little less so."
The first-person narrator here is Angèle Videau, sister of Arielle, daughter of Armelle and Denis, a discreet presence in this novel about women. Three generations of women, from Mané to Armelle, from Armelle to Angèle. Three generations, and not one more.
We meet Angèle in the waiting room at a doctor's surgery, sitting with her hands resting over her waist which is swollen with hope. While, before her eyes, future mothers and young children act out their usual ballet, Angéle speaks to Eric. The princely Eric she so longs for and carries within her, and that she hopes to tame. This is an opportunity to reassess her dreams and memories, and to fill places that have been left empty.
Why were neither of her parents loved by their mothers? Why is it so difficult to have a child in this family? Would her life be a failure if she didn't bring life into it? So many questions, and all of Angèle's questions remain unanswered.
Because Expecting is a feeling of deficiency; a heart beating quietly, ugliness gradually propagating fear, a body that is so dry and soon, if they are not careful, this dwindling family will find the dead have supplanted the living.
Angèle wishes she was not so lucid but for Eric's sake she has revealed everything. An unwavering, almost clinical view of those close to her and of herself; one that reveals - with a violence held in check by her tenderness - all the secrets, longings and hopes that could not or would not be expressed.
By using one young woman's point of view and the sketched lives of women she meets, Expecting succeeds in touching on the universal: motherhood, womanhood, blood ties and life force.
Capucine Ruat was born in 1975. Her first novel, Celle qui ne parle pas, was published by Stock in 2006.
