french novelist and screenwriter, friend of the molli house, anne berest shared with us her reading choices, her current projects, and her preferred writing theme: 'transgenerational genealogy'...
anne berest, french novelist and screenwriter, friend of the molli house, shared with us her reading choices, her current projects, and her preferred writing theme: 'transgenerational genealogy,' which explores the visible and invisible transmissions between generations.
what book are you reading at the moment?
i am currently making my way through all the books by Antoine Wauters, whom i didn’t know before… i find them magnificent
how do you organise your library?
i have a very particular system, it’s an organised mess that i know by heart: i know where every book is. for this reason, i can’t stand when they are moved around — they are my working tools
a word you love?
i love the word “finistère”, which is the title of my latest book. it’s a word that has always fascinated me. literally, it means “the end of the earth”. but if we adopt a lacanian reading, it can also be understood as “finished with silence”. and in breton, it is called pen-ar-bed, which suggests exactly the opposite: “the beginning of the earth”. isn’t that magnificent?
do you have a project you would like to share with us?
i’m about to begin my next novel. it will again deal with transgenerational themes, but i am someone who works very slowly! i take several years to write a book
what is your greatest pride?
when people tell me, “my child, my husband… didn’t like reading, but they started La Carte Postale and devoured it from beginning to end.” i have often heard this from readers, and nothing moves me more
which books about family do you prefer?
a pedigree by Patrick Modiano
the karnovski family by Israel Joshua Singer
the labyrinth of the world: an autobiographical trilogy written by Marguerite Yourcenar, which includes 3 volumes: souvenirs pieux, archives du nord, quoi? l’éternité
what is your best reading memory?
i was 8 or 9 years old when i discovered a children’s edition of an american novel titled fantasia chez les ploucs by Charles Williams. it was a revelation, an epiphany, a delight… i laughed so much, and i realised that literature was the most wonderful thing in the world
what do you seek in your work?
i try to build a body of work that, in the end, unfolds like a family tree, with each volume as a branch from book to book, i explore visible and invisible transmissions between generations, what we inherit, what we free ourselves from, what we receive without choosing it, and what we strive to overcome in order to become ourselves
how would you define your writing?
my writing seeks to bring to light these silent inheritances, sometimes heavy, sometimes salvatory, that shape our trajectories
how do you feel when you wear molli?
i feel good
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