THEA mother is the person who held us in her womb, who has often been closest to us in life, but do we really know her? This is the question that arises Julia Deck in his latest novel Ann of England (Adelphi), just translated by us, winner of the Premio Médicis 2024 in France.
It is precisely her, the Ann of the title, the character whose mysteries the author wants to investigate, venturing for the first time into the auto-fiction genre: the starting point is the dramatic moment in which she risks losing her, when he finds her at home lying on the floor, suffering from a stroke. Saved at the last minute, she remains partially paralyzed and Julia begins a personal journey, between hospitals, grumpy doctors, bureaucracy, battles to obtain treatment and a place for rehabilitation in an RSA.
In parallel, the story that takes us back to the mother’s past: born in the 1930s in working-class England, capable of escaping her fate through her love of literaturegood grades and scholarships, she fled to France fully riding the wave of freedom of the period between the ’60s and ’70s. Many trips through Europe, the Nouvelle Vague, Swinging London, and finally the marriage with a French peer, the writer’s father. Courageous and strong, however, she has always remained distant and foreign, with a dark side never revealed, buried among the tangles of her family of English origin.
Julia Deck was born in Paris to a French father and an English mother. He has published five novels translated into many languages. The latest, “Ann of England”, was awarded the 2024 Prix Médicis (photo Joel Saget / AFP via Getty Images).
It’s the first time you’ve written a largely autobiographical book: what drove you to tell your story?
Until now I had always felt distant from this type of narrative. The first idea was born by thinking back to the history of my English maternal family, where I suspected there was a sort of secret, never openly told. Later, the thing that really convinced me was the experience with my mother, after she had a stroke and I had to follow her through the treatment process.
Is the illness or death of a parent something you are never really prepared for?
You think about it, you imagine it, but if that day comes it doesn’t seem real to you: when I realized that I was losing my mother, a thousand feelings of guilt began, I wondered if the accident could have been avoided, I crucified myself for not having been there…
“Ann of England” by Julia Deck, Adelphi (201 pages, 19 euros).
He says the impact with French public hospitals and medical institutions has been difficult.
A real catastrophe, I knew that after Covid things had gotten worse, that there was less money, but I was unprepared for such a disaster: especially compared to the absurd way in which people are treated. A medical response is expected and an administrative or commercial response is obtained. This is how I discovered the nursing home market. While I got angry, despaired or argued, I started to think that it wasn’t just me, I was faced with a social problem. And I wanted to write about it, try to make literature about this topic too, which is usually taboo, no one wants to think about it until they have to face a similar situation.
Even in the most dramatic story he decided from the beginning to use the filter of irony, a key common to his other books.
I think it comes naturally to me, a humor that I suppose I inherited from the British branch of my family. It’s a way of seeing the world, and also a sort of protection: if you can inject a little irony into even the most terrible things, everything becomes more manageable.
The other part of the book, which alternates with current events, takes a leap back into the past, following in the footsteps of her mother and her English family: has she always been somehow “foreign” for you too?
Even though we are very close, she has always been an enigma, I always felt that between us there was a closed door built with many silences, things left unsaid. She is “foreign” to me in the French sense of the term, which is double, it also means “unknown”. A perfect character for a novel.
Do you think you managed to transform her into a character, looking at her objectively?
I tried, by writing about it I tried to discover her gray areas: I always suspected that there was something false in our family tree, an event that happened before I was born, in the working-class England where she grew up. It was the most fun part, doing research in the archives on that historical period, from the 1930s to the 1970s, looking for documents, digging through family photographs, and then stitching together these details with my mother’s only diary (she had written three, she destroyed two) and the few stories she told me when I was little. In the end I didn’t invent anything, only the names were changed.
Has he found his truth?
I haven’t revealed the secret. I expected simple truths, yes or no, black or white, but instead I found new ideas, a different way of seeing the situation. I understood that there is nothing objective in the word truth, it does not concern the facts themselves, rather an adaptation that allows you to face reality by relating to people close to you.
You have always had to navigate between two languages and two countries, which one do you feel is yours?
It may seem strange, but my real mother tongue is my father’s. I feel deeply French and in England, today as yesterday, I continue to feel like a stranger, albeit a welcome one.