"The mother next door" at an age when we want to take away her humanity

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• Today, "The mother next door" by Thael Boost, published on May 13, 2022 by Editions Anne Carrière.

Marceline Bodier, bookstagramer and contributor to the

Books reading group, recommends

to Thael Boost, published on May 13, 2022 by Éditions Anne Carrière.

His favorite quote:

Why this book?

• Because when his mother suffers from Alzheimer's and has to go to nursing

  home at 90, Thael is angry... and so are we.

  “I am angry with this body that lets go of you.

  I blame this brain for abandoning you.

  I blame society for treating you like a secondary, perishable commodity.

  Which brings you back to a purely logistical status.

  Everything is cruel, in this story, because our mothers today, they are our pillars of yesterday, our idols forever... and it's us tomorrow.

  So what is the meaning of our anger?

  Meaning: that's the subject of a book that doesn't talk about old age, but about life.

• Because it is the story of a woman who is told to us.

  Yes, a woman: “a woman, not just a little old woman, your brain refutes but must capitulate.

  You are constantly referred to this indefinite status, this neutrality of life.

  » And not just a mother either, but a woman, whose funny and original personality emerges through the memories of her daughter, even reminiscent of Almodovar's film,

  Stilettos

  : « the mother and the woman.

  As if two people coexist in you.

  You pamper me and then there's always a moment when you leave me to get ready to go out.

  »

• Because of course, the Ehpad is not the main subject, but the book

  confronts us with the risk of absurdity to which such a place leads: reasoning as if one passed "from the state of man or woman to that of old.

  Now, an old man, an old woman, are not “old people”, but an (old) man, an (old) woman!

  But what do men and women do?

  They talk about love, they meet people, they have a sex life.

  Or not ;

  but isn't this already the case at 20 or 50?

  So why would you want to place a cursor beyond which our humanity would disappear?

• Because one of the outlets that we can give to anger

  is to recognize that “there would be almost a poetry to this parade of words and memories which bow out after a last greeting to the public.

  And I smile at you, so as not to cry.

  Thael Boost has a certain talent for flushing out all the double meanings: “Your father was polygrot,” says his mother.

  Polyglot?

  Perhaps, but the author also evokes in small touches the difficulties of the couple of her parents.

  Therefore, whether the pun is intentional or not, the meaning is still there…

• Because if puns mean something, then maybe

  the whole disease does too.

  Maybe it's not even a disease?

  “I have come to the conclusion that this disease is a parade found by those who are afraid of dying so as not to have to face death in the face.

  Of course the fear of death is everywhere.

  But she is in her rightful place, and among a thousand sentences that I want to remember, it is this one that I will keep: "I'm not afraid that Mom will die, I'm afraid that she will have a bad life. .

  I don't want to give him a delayed death, but the best possible life.

  »

  
  

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

At 41, Rosy Boost wanted a girl "against all odds, including Dad": it's Thael.

Today, Rosy is 90 years old and their roles are reversed.

Between anger, laughter and mad love, Thael goes with it: "It's no longer the mother I care for, but the woman and the child all scared deep inside you.

»

Characters.

There's Rosy, the mom the girls have always looked up to.

And then there is Rosy, “in a Schrödinger version of life, there and not there all at the same time”.

This Rosy is "the mother next door", the one we don't want to see, but whom her daughter looks at and nevertheless tells in 200 poignant pages.

Places.

And if the only place of the book was that, timeless, of childhood?

“Never has the phrase We're not in a playground sounded so wrong.

We never leave childhood.

We convince ourselves of this to give ourselves a certain countenance.

When age has decided to catch up with us, we go back there very quickly.

»

The time.

The book takes us through a century: that of the mother who was "nine years old in 1940", that of the daughter born when she was 41. With memories in which everyone can relate, between the smell of hot mayonnaise in rice and pancakes "gluttonous as if life depended on it".

The author.

Thael Boost captures with humor and tenderness moments of his mother's life on instagram, in the excellent account @tetedemum.

We find all the flavor of it in The mother next door, which puts it into perspective with a great depth that allows us to identify ourselves.

A life-saving first book.

This book was read with

chills, the whole time.

The last sentence of the book, which deeply echoes my own reflection, made me burst into tears: I let you discover it... Just read this one, which justifies the very act of writing: "As long as I will not put the word End, you will be alive.

»

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