David Foenkinos (Paris, 1974)author Delicacy (2009) — finalist for some of the most prestigious awards in France and editorial phenomenon translated into dozens of languages - from the beginning he turned into one of those writers who with each new novel goes to the first place in the world.
But the story begins in a less brilliant way. From his childhood, he keeps the memory of the trips that he was able to take for free thanks to his father’s work at the airlines. Hasta que a heart condition forced her to enter the hospital for monthsat the moment of death.
Two constants were born from this experience: literature as a refuge – the last possible territory in the long hours of recovery – and a very special form of looking at death. A familiar presence, like a man who invades his writings, from the first pages.
Let’s note what it is DelicacyFrançois lost his life in an accident while leaving home; y en Happy lifeÉric Cherson decided to fake his own funeral to take care of the candle.
It will be released in 2014 Charlotte, in his most ambitious work—dedicated to the German artist Charlotte Salomon during her career and awarded the Renaudot and Goncourt des Lycées—Foenkinos followed an exploration of the unexpected turns born of the rock with death.
Now I start hard and rev to start it up Everyone loves Clarawhich is now published in Spain by Alfaguara. In it, Foenkinos narrates in the third person how banker Alexis Koskas was living his orderly life when Clara fell into a coma after a cocaine accident.
Clara won’t be the same for you after all. Not only does life return, but it seems to have crossed an invisible line. And with this return, Foenkinos enters more uncertain territory: territory that reason cannot fully explain.
Please. In one of his latest posts on Instagram, he mentions a statue of a non-Catholic cement factory in Rome, Angel of pain as a starting point Everyone loves Clara. Can you tell us a little more?
Response. It is certain. This sculpture inspired the novel in me. When you write, you’re always looking for inspiration, things that might depress someone in you. He met me in Rome with my hija and they recommended me to visit this cement factory. It is a little frequented place – you have often been to Rome -.
I was amazed to see this statue of an angel looking at me and to learn the story behind it.
«I write a lot about art, but this is the first time I am surprised that an image appears directly in a book, that the reader feels a connection between the work and my narrative. Love and sadness. Also, the beauty that exists in a man who, when a woman dies, becomes such a statue… and that he dies a few months later.
«You who tell me about Instagram is where many readers share with me their impressions of the book and their visits to this cement plant. The door keeper is said to be the most biased because she has a golden book in which people talk about “Clara” and ask who this Clara is.
P. Where did Clara’s idea come from and why did she choose a character who brings a man out of a coma?
R. Tell me when I wanted to talk about the video, but mainly about signs of life, mysticism, because it is something very personal. When I was writing Charlotte tell me how much I was attracted to Germany. I felt comfortable in Berlin, without knowing where this attraction came to me, which was later translated into this biographical novel about the artist.
«This novel is actually about how well we can be in a place, with someone, without even knowing them, from those intuitions that come to us without rational explanation. I had time to write about all this, although I didn’t know that it would eventually lead me to the story of a young girl who had an accident ten or six years ago and was months between life and death, as it happened to me.
«I had a heart attack when I was sixteen. Several weeks passed between life and death in the hospital. when you despair returning to life with the don: writing. Suddenly I had an overflowing imagination and no idea about creation. In the book, I highlight this relationship, which is so important and so real to me, between writing and video, through the character of the writer. Yes, without a doubt one of the most personal books I’ve written.
P. Is Clara the story character you’re most looking for?
R. Not particularly, I’m looking for all my characters. It is certain that my heroines — like it Delicacy or en Charlotte– they are very strange to me. But I am such a young adolescent – Clara – who desarrolla dos de vintente, like a depressed writer –Ruprez— completely blocked and impossible to write a line many years ago.
P. Considering you’ve written a book every year for the past twenty years.
R. Really.
P. The first chapters of the novel deal with contemporary family relationships. Love, chaos, rifts, sexuality. What story does Clara’s family reveal in the thematic plot of the book even after the accident?
R. I don’t have a theory about what family represents. What interests me are life situations from a fresh perspective. I enjoy imagining this drama: a divorced couple who haven’t seen each other in years, who immediately return to the hospital after hija is in a coma. How did you act in front of someone you shared for so many years in such a situation? When we meet a person we haven’t seen for a long time, we feel a certain intimidation. You can even restore love in the midst of pain. I wanted to explore this mix of emotions in the book.
P. The headline on the page has universal confirmation. What does “everybody loves Clara” mean? Do you love for fascination, for love, for admiration?
R. What I was interested in was showing the fear that everyone feels like this young person who is able to suffer a terrible accident. The name is mysterious and that’s why I chose it. Hay in the universal algo. When you read it, you ask yourself: why does the whole world love Clara? And you have to read the story to understand it. For me, it’s not so much about the love they give her, but the love they give her. Clara is touched by affection. And somehow they help her survive.
P. He stated in an interview that his own experience of seeking death had a “mystical feel”. Could you elaborate on this idea?
R. Starting with this experience, what I felt turned into the heart of my life. All people who have been in contact with death live in a similar way. I turned very sensitively. Sensitive to beauty, art, music.
«I dreamed of an idea I had not had before. It’s very strange to me, for example, to be in front of the computer and suddenly find everything: flashes of conversations, situations, characters. So my books work, they’re published in many countries… and I’m not sure exactly where it all comes from.
«There is something mysterious about everything. de facto I don’t have a younger ego; What interests me most is why I was chosen to carry these stories. I am very sensitive to the signs of life, that invisible part that we cannot always decipher. I am interested in numerology, astrology; I enjoy playing with numbers.
P. In fact, the narrator notes that Clara was born in 2008 and that she maintains an external relationship with the number.
R. It is certain. However, it is not the esoteric that interests me. Now I’m ready to tell someone who sees it, although I saw different things to write a story. What interested me were the first speeches of don de la videncia. One of them told me that when she was eight years old, her abuela died and she talked to her afterwards. In these things I recognize that I believe. There is a limit to the invisible that fascinates me.
P. Do you think that literature can “disorientate” the reader in the same way that Clara despairs of something invisible, intuitive, but still existing within us?
R. I can’t deny it. I receive many messages from readers who recognize themselves in the characters of my novels and my stories. These connections always surprise me because I write thinking about producing this effect. I write a lot of my characters. What I care about is that people enjoy my books.
P. If there is any relationship between writing and intuition, how does it deal with the two forms of understanding the unseen?
R. Completely. I really believe this is a theme that runs throughout the novel as a conductor: the powers of the spirit, the vision. Consigue writing translates the invisible. For me, writing is a vector. Creating a world, stories, characters… imagination is about bringing to life invisible worlds that don’t exist. I never wrote a book the same way.
«I rarely have a complete plot from the beginning. Writing really isn’t limited to schedules. When I step into a book, it becomes an obsession. Duermo little; I am always active in my mind. It’s not hours of work, but a kind of trance that can last for months. It is the body that decides what I want to count. When I don’t have a topic, I go back and forth. I am writing about the bulimic form…and every day without creating I fall into some kind of twist.
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