Clara Dupont-Monod (Paris, 1973) has already sold 400,000 copies in France of Adaptarse (Salamandra), the beautiful book that won the Femina, the Goncourt des Liceuses and the Landerneau awards. The novel, translated into 19 languages, tells the story of a family, that of the author, with a child who suffered from a serious brain disability. “I adored that boy for ten years,” Dupond-Monod said in an interview. I came out of that experience much more tolerant, much less ignorant, much richer, because it requires resources that you did not imagine. He asks you for patience and qualities that only someone abnormal can require.”
Adapt is an ode to family, with its tensions and tenderness, and includes excellent descriptions of the natural environment. It is set in the Cévennes massif, a very sparsely populated area, between Montpellier and Nîmes. Dupont-Monod pays tribute to the mountain people, quiet and solid, like stones. The latter, by the way, act as narrators of the story. In the meeting with La Vanguardia, the writer took the opportunity to denounce “the State scandal” represented by the bureaucratic difficulties of families with a member who suffers from a disability in receiving help. They are, for her, “a silent army, standing and in the shadows,” that deserves much more recognition.
His family went through a very difficult period. Do you believe that writing, literature, has a therapeutic, healing power?
No, I think it’s the other way around. I think that the novel is possible because there has been healing, because mourning has taken place, because life has continued its course. Only in this way can you write a novel.
But in the book it is said that the idea that time heals everything is false, because “in reality, time does not heal anything, quite the opposite.”
Yes, indeed. There it is the character of the older brother who speaks. I like him a lot because he goes against our collective beliefs. Our society thinks that movement is good, that we must move forward, turn the page. The older brother takes a step back from the world and says no. He is much more revolutionary than the younger sister. He contradicts another collective belief, that of mourning. He thinks there is a difference between living without someone and living with someone’s absence. He decides to live with the ghost of that being he loved, his brother, as if he had died yesterday.
Because?
It is an option. He says that the day is when he will not feel pain, that day he will have truly lost it. If pain is the last link I have with him, then I stay with the pain. And who are we to judge. Adapting is also adapting to difference, of course, but also to absence, to wounds, to grief.
What is the state of family health in France today?
There are readers who told me that my book is not modern. I asked them why. And they answered me that it is a tribute to the family and the family is not fashionable. Ha ha.
The traditional family, you mean?
Yes, but I think it’s a compliment. Not being fashionable is very good. It’s what lasts. In reality, literature explores a lot of the negative side of the family, which exists, such as violence, but there is also, obviously, an extraordinarily positive side. Even those who don’t have a family make one. It’s a bra. When the pandemic hit, I was surprised to see that everyone was looking for news about the family. He went to his parents’ house and checked to see if his grandmother was okay. It is absurd to retain only the negative of the family. I see the family, especially siblings, as a stone wall. Storms can knock them down, but they will rebuild with a new balance.
Why didn’t you give names to the characters? He is always the older brother, the youngest…
Because I had the idea of ??a story. In a story the characters never have names. They have nicknames, such as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and there are no geographical citations. There is always talk of a castle, “once upon a time”. And the first sentence takes up exactly the formula of the story: “One day, in a family, a misfit child was born.” He wanted the reference to the stories.
You write that “people are the result of the place in which they are born, and often that place is a form of kinship.” What does it mean?
I think that we are as much the fruit of a place as of blood. In France we have the expression “a son of the country.” That indicates the organic link you have with a place. I think there are love stories between people and places, sometimes as strong as between two people. It is not known why. And I am convinced that the more borders are eliminated, the more we will need a very delimited place to compensate for the immensity of the space that opens before us, which is formidable, but, from an identity point of view, we need a place.
Why are the stones the narrator?
From the strictly narrative aspect, that has saved the text. The difficulty in a book like this is finding the right distance. I tried to make the characters speak, but if each one said I, that doesn’t work. The stones gave me good distance, neutrality and, at the same time, tenderness. Besides, you know, in the mountains stones are friends of the family. My father gives names to the stones. He says: don’t step on Simone. I grew up with it. My grandparents did that. There is something very medieval too. I love the Middle Ages very much and wrote about it. In the Middle Ages they liked to animate the inanimate. Names were given to the church bells, to the stones.
At one point he writes that the older brother stopped reading to focus on science because “the sciences, at least, did no harm, they did not build a bridge to memory, they did not appeal to feelings.”
Yes, the experience with disabled people forces us to rethink our way of being in the world. That’s why it’s very enriching. That’s why I will never understand why our society gives so little space to different people. If in France we put disabled children in a class with those who are not, that would build more intelligent adults.
