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Gaëlle Obiégly |
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« Je m’utilise comme si j’étais un instrument. De toute façon, je suis une toute petite partie d’un être immense et souvent je dis des conneries. C’est pour ça que je cherche à n’être personne. Ça me permet d’en dire moins. Ou plus, mais sans craindre pour ma réputation. » |
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Hôtesse d’accueil accidentellement enfermée un week-end entier dans les wc de son entreprise, la narratrice de N’être personne va endurer cette épreuve avec les moyens du bord (de la sagesse, du papier hygiénique, un stylo bic) en improvisant un cabinet d’écriture. Au gré de remémorations, apparemment chaotiques, elle se trouve peu à peu traversée par tous les âges de la vie.
A receptionist — the author’s alter ego — finds herself accidentally locked in the toilets at work on a Friday afternoon and realises she will have to spend the weekend there. As long as she has to put up with this unfortunate ordeal, she contemplates it with more good sense than resignation; with what’s available (toilet paper and a ballpoint) she improvises a sort of ‘moonlighting’ writing office.
Taking advantage of this tragi-comic situation, Gaëlle Obiégly lets herself go in this journal of captivity, taking on several different facets of her existence with scandalous candour. Here and there she develops her «communist tendencies», her instinctive solidarity with the thief who stole her computer, her taste for contemplating the «big pink petal» of her sexual organs in the mirror, her free erotic offerings in the arms of strangers, or her wild nights under the influence of alcohol or psychotropic substances. Besides these improper secrets, this mental voyage is also an excuse for escapades on the outermost borders of Turkey or Crete, a tour through a former concentration camp in Trieste, and several detours through an Austria still haunted by its xenophobic demons.
“Punctuated by intimate memories, a luxuriant patchwork with a radical peculiarity.” (Le Monde)
“Obiégly’s mind is absolutely fascinating. N’être personne allows us to become someone.” (Télérama)
A fascinating material, pulled out from an unexpected writing room.” (L’Humanité) |
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