Catherine Millet, the mother and her abysses

She hesitates over the date, and the hesitation, displayed, underlines the search for precision—and then, at a certain point, its impasse. On March 21 or 22, 1982, Catherine Millet, then 33, went to see her mother Simone in her apartment in Bois-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine). Readers of Une enfance de rêve (A Dream Childhood) (Flammarion, 2014) and Commencements (Flammarion, 2022), two of her previous autobiographical books, may remember the places where the writer grew up. Her mother is unwell, body and soul. She is frequently in and out of the hospital. Her daughter remembers holding her only twice. She also saw her once, as a child, climb out of the window. She hadn't jumped.

On March 21 or 22, "I have no memory of what happened while I was in the apartment or what we said to each other. Only the last scene, on the landing, forms a very distinct, stripped-down block, with always that blond light