La Danse de la tarentule | Claire Blanchard

EAN : 9782258164086

Shaping : BROCHE

Pages : 320

Size : 140 x 225 mm

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The Dance of the tarantula

Claire Blanchard

Release date : 14/01/2021

A moving story of a child’s love for a mother who is on the verge of madness, this astutely observed novel plunges us into the infernal spiral of family violence…

At a very young age, Emilie and her brother Jean-Baptiste are entrusted to their maternal grandmother and their aunt, who live in a manor house in Croisic. While their parents are in India – their father is an engineer and their mother a maths teacher – they go through hell... At a very young age, Emilie and her brother Jean-Baptiste are entrusted to their maternal grandmother and their aunt, who live in a manor house in Croisic. While their parents are in India – their father is an engineer and their mother a maths teacher – they go through hell at the hands of an immensely wealthy but mad grandmother and an alcoholic aunt who treats them just as badly. Emilie’s only ray of hope is the prospect of her beloved mother visiting them for Christmas and in the summer.

By the time her parents finally return, Emilie is twelve years old. The family settles down in Paris where, beneath the surface of an apparently serene bourgeois existence, the true hell begins. The idolised mother turns out to be a manipulative and violent monster who takes pleasure in inflicting humiliation – a monster with an angel face. Emilie tries to protect herself from the toxic relationship between her parents by plunging herself into her studies and by playing the piano. Very gifted, she does well in her piano competitions and a successful career beckons… until the day when her mother deliberately burns her hand on the eve of a major competition. Meanwhile her brother, who has been diagnosed with dyslexia, is struggling at school. The father for his part is entirely indifferent, except for when he takes a leaf out of the mother’s book and gets violent too, and he ends up abandoning the family home. The violence goes on for several years, and whereas Emilie is in constant revolt, her brother Jean-Baptiste sinks into a depression that no one picks up on. Sometimes Emilie even mistreats him too, but she soon mends her ways. The vicious circle seems to be unending until a dramatic incident occurs, whereupon Emilie leaves her mother and agrees to go to boarding school. She will not see her mother again until twenty years later in the old manor house where she has not set foot since childhood.

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Voir la fiche produit

EAN : 9782258164086

Shaping : BROCHE

Pages : 320

Size : 140 x 225 mm

See the product page