The romances we invent

DAY

Némo is a crazy 30-year-old who has been forced by a brutal event to settle down. Which doesn't prevent her from cravings for ardent desire! 

There is such vitality in Amélie Dumoulin's romandamour that it is hard to believe that its narrator is addressing a dead woman. Or perhaps, since the recipient is no longer there, the friend who writes to her can do so without restraint, in a tone of frank freedom.

Anyway, it gives a sparkling novel, a little object as curious as its title — this romandamourwhich is indeed to be read in one word and in lowercase — and that the kitsch image which appears on the cover.

Némo, nickname of the narrator, has decided to keep a diary to do the point on his life by telling it to Barbara, his best friend. She died six years earlier, along with her husband, in a car accident. She left behind three young children.

For Nemo, abandoning them was out of the question; she therefore took them under her wing, with her boyfriend — yes, with a capital C.

The disused clinic that she and some roommates occupied above a pharmacy therefore became a family home , with the adult responsibilities that come with it: “There, my old, if you saw how straight we walk now! “.

But no matter how hard she tries to become a “professional mom”, Nemo wants to be light-hearted. Even romance, as we come across in the Harlequin novels that his grandmother loves. Precisely, a very real male fantasy crosses her path and Nemo will fall into her net.

She tells all this to Barbara as if we heard her talking to her, in a controlled mix of joual, Anglicisms , fashionable words and simply beautiful words.

To which are added words cut from old Harlequin, duly quoted, which decline all modes of seduction; without forgetting the exchanges of naughty text messages between the young woman and her dark beau whom she nicknamed… Brossard.

Successful transposition

We will quickly see that regardless of the era, the clichés of fantasy do not vary! But above all, underneath the amusing remarks, a whole architecture of attachment unfolds.

To the dreamed love is indeed juxtaposed the formidable loyalty to a lost friend, which is manifested in particular by the affection of Nemo for her children. The passages where she tells him what they have become capsizes our hearts.

Amélie Dumoulin signs here her first novel for adults and clearly her playful approach comes directly from her work in children's literature and creation theatrical. The transposition is successful.

That is why, like a child immersed in a tale, like a spectator caught up in what is happening on stage, like a shopgirl who has a crush on novels rose, we remain attached to our romandamour.

And in the final pun, we float somewhere between a smile and a tear in our eyes.