L'Enfant Méduse

by Sylvie Germain

Une petit fille, Lucie Daubigné, vit une enfance paisible et heureuse dans un village du Berry, au cœur des landes et des marais peuplés d'oiseaux, d'insectes, de crapauds et de fées invisibles. Les voix des bêtes, du vent et des légendes restées vivantes tissent le chant de la terre. Un chant plein de douceur.

Mais le calme bonheur du lieu et de l'enfance est soudain brisé. Un ogre rôde dans le pays, avide de corps de petites filles. La douleur et le deuil se lèvent sur son passage. Lucie devient la proie de l'ogre. Mais, si celui-ci ne la tue pas, comme ses autres victimes, il détruit peu à peu en elle l'innocence, la joie de vivre, l'amour et la bonté. Lucie, rongée par son secret de honte et de souffrance, se transforme en une créature maigre, laide et haineuse. Elle s'ensauvage. Le chant de la terre devient un chant de guerre et de vengeance. Armée de la seule force de son regard, l'Enfant Méduse entreprend le combat contre l'ogre. Lucie vaincra, mais ni la paix, ni l'innocence ne lui seront rendues. La douleur, la violence et la haine ont pris trop profondément racine en elle. Il faudra longtemps à Lucie, très longtemps, pour réapprendre à vivre en paix avec le mal, avec les autres et elle-même...

Genres: Fiction, France

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 1993

About the author

Germain received a doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne, and taught it at the French School in Prague from 1987 to 1993.
She claimed that philosophy, 'a continuous wonder' to her, was also too 'analytical', and she switched from Descartes and Heidegger to Kafka and Dostoevsky.
She grew up in rural France, in an area steeped in mythology and folklore, and she admitted 'that the power of place had a huge effect on me but it was an unconscious one'. That her prose was 'related to the earth ... the soil, the peasants, the trees', was revealed in her first novel, The Book of Nights (1985), which won six literary awards.
The second novel, Night of Amber (1987) continued from the first, and was followed by Days of Anger (1989). Despite this three-part structure, Germain claimed that she was 'trying only to express an obsessive image and to explain it to myself. I have no pretensions to creating a mythos. Each book begins with an image or a dream and I try to express that and give it coherence.'

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) Eight-year-old Lucie is a vibrant girl filled with curiosity about the world until her pedophilic step-brother Ferdinand steals her joy and over a three-year period of abuse transforms her into a withdrawn specter of her former self. While Ferdinand mutes Lucie through repeated threats of violence, no one else in the household bothers to seriously investigate her drastic personality change. Despite Ferdinand's failure to make anything of himself other than a drunkard and a serial child rapist, his mother Aloïse keeps him on a pedestal, as she sees in him the living embodiment of her first husband Victor, who died young in the war, and whose spirit she much prefers to her corporeal second husband Hyacinthe, father of Lucie. Hyacinthe, a sympathetic character despite his ineffective fathering, hunkers down in his study speaking with people all over the world on his ham radio, while remaining reticent among his own family. Ultimately, all of the adults in Lucie's sphere fail to protect her in spectacular fashion, leading her to eventually take matters into her own hands, although her exact role in what transpires is the one mystery Germain leaves lingering behind a subtle cloak of magical realism.

Excepting the aforementioned hint of magical realism, the novel's style and form, and even some of its peripheral themes, are reminiscent of Virginia Woolf's masterpiece The Waves, which even gets a passing nod by name at one point in the text. However, Germain's tendency to overexplain the thematic significance of events and rehash previous plot points through her third person omniscient narration undermines the quality of the storytelling. While I appreciated the Woolfian structure of the book and I did think Germain brought the novel to a graceful close, my reading experience was somewhat marred by the instances of repetition and the explication of certain insights that could have better remained unstated.

Medusa [for Aloïse]

[ethel — · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enterrez moi avec c'est TRES important !!! Lucie ma chérie je pense souvent à toi ma muse mes plus beaux poèmes de résistance sont inspirés par tes ocelles de feu

[emy · Rating 5 out of 5]

magnifique, absolument dévastateur, poétique à souhait

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Voor mij een heel mooie manier om over dit onderwerp te schrijven

[Elisabete Henriques · Rating 2 out of 5]

O tema deste livro é muito delicado e forte ao mesmo tempo, expressando-se através de Lucie, a personagem principal - uma criança cujo processo de crescimento e perspectivas várias de "olhar sobre o mundo", acompanhamos na escrita desta escritora atípica e poética.

Não fosse a minha falta de paciência para as descrições exaustivas e repetições entediantes, talvez o número de estrelas fosse maior. Especulando um pouco, poderia até arranjar explicações para o uso abusivo destes "arranjos" no contexto da obra. Quem sabe uma provocação em si, para aguçar os sentidos do leitor e lhe abrir o peito e a mente para a envolvência da personagem e a sua demanda?...Acredito no entanto, que se este livro fosse reduzido a metade das páginas, teria o dobro do interesse. Pelo menos para mim!...

Nevertheless!... destaco a minha profunda admiração pela coragem e sensibilidade da autora, ao escrever sobre algo tão melindroso e infelizmente real...

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

“C'est que sa mère est aussi la mère de l’autre. Sa mère est en même temps celle du loup et celle de la chèvre. Elle est même bien davantage celle du loup.”

“Secret très prodigieux qu'elle n'a avoué qu'à la terre, aux bêtes des marais, et à la statue de saint Antoine.”

[‎ · Rating 5 out of 5]

je n’ai jamais rien lu d’aussi parfait

[Magda Filipe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este livro desiludiu-me um bocado porque tinhas algumas expectativas que não foram de todo alcançadas.
De inicio parecia-me que ia ser uma história interessante, mas revelou-se um pouco perturbadora e mexe um bocado com o psicológico de uma pessoa.
As personagens não me disseram nada, não criei ligação com nenhuma delas e não consigo entender a intenção de algumas delas.
Só não dei 1 estrela a este livro porque realmente foi rápido de ler e não me torturou muito tempo, mas foi sem duvida uma história muito sinistra e perturbadora.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

By far the best book I have read in the last five years. I am soon commencing La Pleurante des rues de Prague as a token of my newfound devotion to Sylvie Germain.

[Beatris · Rating 5 out of 5]

more than five stars

[Jeanne 🌷 · Rating 5 out of 5]

mon livre préféré a tout jamais, d’une sublimité à couper le souffle, un mélange entre monstruosité, souffrance et poésie.

[b · Rating 5 out of 5]

je déteste et j’aime ce livre à la fois omg

[something_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book expecting it to be something absolutely different than what I got. However, I'm glad I picked it up.

The story revolves around a child named Lucie and the world around her. The chapters where things are shown to us from the perspective of the light, or the objects, are absolutely delicious in the way they are written. I also love how we can dive inside the characters mind, and understand what they're going through. The passages where the world is seen through the innocent, childlike eyes of Lucie in the beginning was marvelous and imaginative (and somewhat humorous too. Like the explanation of fairy electricity). It also has a portrait of human consciousness that I really liked. That's part of what kept me glued to this book - the humanity of the characters in it.

I'm not sure how to describe this book, in all honesty, because it's such a different read than what I usually choose. It is dark, shocking, sad, moving, beautiful, honest and haunting. But it certainly is a very good book.