It was French novelist has won the 23rd April last the price of the Closerie des Lilas with “And still the forests”, a fiction which recounts the collapse of a world and resonates eerily with our current events. For The Express Ten (partner price), Sandrine Collette tells the story of the genesis of this novel, between revelation and ode to the revival.
what is this award for you ?
Sandrine Collette : above all, It is the outcome of a bet. Leave the world of the polar (even if this novel is very dark) to the field of literature. Like all bets, it was risky, and I did that because I had with me an incredible team to editions JC Lattès. In fact, it is a huge relief, as if I had held my breath until then. Then, it is joy. This word is a little bit simple and should not hide this as there are deeply emotional and sincere in him. And finally, it is important that this prize is a prize awarded by women. As a child, I dreamed of being a boy. It has been a slow learning, a long tame to tell me that it was much better to be a woman, to report to me in growing my friendships the most real were those of women. The price of the Closerie des Lilas has also this a particular resonance for me : I have the impression to be recognized by my peers.
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The subject of this novel is very singular. How the idea is imposed in your mind ?
As so often, by tiny accidents of the imagination or of the observation that, in aggregating each other, give the “click” of the story. In this case, the appearance of praying mantises in my garden as there had never been any. I learned that insects, and particularly their migrations, were the first warning signs of climatic and weather events is increasing. Suddenly, the awareness that the past few years, I could make long trips in the car without having to wash my windshield because of the insects crushed back to me, as well as the trees which dry up here and there since 2003. And, read in memory, it has built up this serious subject matter that I live at the bottom, for several novels, and who have reached a form of “fullness”.
“In a setting of total annihilation, I think a lot of readers have been stirred by the possibility that this extraordinary situation exists, one day.”
What is your message with this book ?
I’m not sure that there is a message : there is a history taken in a context far. It can be read by discovering a hundred messages, but it can also be read just as a story. However, in a setting of total annihilation, I think a lot of readers have been stirred by the possibility that this extraordinary situation exists one day. This has reactivated questions, anxieties, and awareness. But the novel is not bound to anything. He sows issues such as the Petit Poucet has sowed the bread crumbs behind him ; perhaps the world will transform-t-it rocks, and then there will be concrete things. Perhaps the world will eat there, and then it will continue as is, for a time. And if there is a message in this book, is that the destruction is never absolute. It is the day that precedes the rebirth.
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“And still the forests,” Sandrine Collette
– (c) SDP
“The destruction is never absolute. It is the day before the renaissance”
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This novel also resonates with current events. How are you doing with this aspect in part prescient ?
Precisely, I tell myself that it is not prescient ! It is even probably the opposite : a certain sensitivity to the air of the time. It is because of the alerts exist for a long time about the planet, the disappearance of the animals, the melting of the permafrost, the advance of the deserts, of the great extinctions – it is because of this that my novel has taken a body, because the material was there, at hand, it was enough to put words on it. But where you’re right, it is only today, looking at the pictures of Paris deserted, one cannot help thinking of the atmosphere of a kind of end of the world. Then we make links between what happens and what we have read or heard. But this are links, that’s all : not a prophecy, just something to think. Think a lot.
