Aurélia, who has the role of narrator, recounts her grandmother’s life through her rare memories of the older women. The thing is, Grannie Loulou wasn’t much of a talker. With her nose always in a novel, she was a real mystery to her granddaughter. A few years after her death, Aurélia decides to dive into the secrets of the impregnable fortress her grandmother represented.

Holed up inside her garret room, she decides to write a biography of the grandmother that she hardly knew. Aurélia turns her into a resistance fighter in her youth, in love with Adam and pregnant by the time she’s 17 after a single night spent with the man who will always be her first and only lover before disappearing forever. That betrayal broke Louise, condemning her to the life of a reluctant single mom.

By examining the memories she herself invented, Aurélia is trying to find the roots of the anxiety that she, and all the women who have preceded her, suffer from: a fear of words. Silence binds Aurélia to Louise, two generations of women who have a hard time understanding each other.

Of course, the missing piece in the story is Louise’s daughter, Aurélia’s mother, who passed the family curse down to the next generation without even trying to rid herself of it.

With this début novel, Aurélia shows how silence within a family can wind up destroying it. Writing may well be the only way for her to save herself.

With this début novel, Aurélia shows how silence within a family can wind up destroying it. Writing may well be the only way for her to save herself.