Marie Vareille, her friendships and her "Disenchanted"

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• Today, “Désenchantées” by Marie Vareille, published on May 17, 2022 by Éditions Charleston, which answers questions from “20 Minutes”.

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, recommends

Marie Vareille, whose new novel was released on May 17, 2022 by Éditions Charleston and who kindly answered her questions.

His favorite quote:

Why this book?

• Because we are following a story over two eras,

  past and present, and this construction is fascinating.

  Marie Vareille's pen, fluid and addictive, made it impossible for me to let go of the novel without knowing the outcome, as the author offers us unexpected twists and turns.

  This reading is all the more stunning as it takes us back to a period that marked us: the 1990s.

• Because this novel by Marie Vareille is even stronger

  than her previous one (

  Thus freezing soap bubbles

  ) by her choice to highlight women through female solidarity and this in different ways, regardless of the times and what they live.

  But this novel also highlights friendship, the one we create as a child and which will be part of us all our lives.

  It was delicious !

The essentials in 2 minutes

The plot.

The disappearance of Sarah Leroy has upset the small town of Bouville-sur-Mer and moved the whole of France.

Twenty years later, Fanny returns to the scene of this tragedy that marked her youth.

It's a past that she preferred to forget because Sarah's story is also a bit her own...

Characters.

We obviously have Sarah the disappeared, Fanny but also Angélique, Morgane or even Lilou and Jasmine who revolve around this disappearance.

Places.

The novel takes place mainly in the North, in particular towards the Côte d'Opale.

The time.

The novel takes place in our time and twenty years ago.

The author.

Marie Vareille was born in Burgundy in 1985 and lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two daughters.

His bestseller

, translated in many countries, has sold more than 100,000 copies.

He notably received the 2020 Charleston Readers' Choice Award.

Marie Vareille, how did the idea for this novel come to you?

Let's say it was an event that happened to a member of my family that inspired me.

Then, I had long wanted to write about friendship, especially childhood friendship.

Quite simply because childhood friends are decisive encounters in life.

They are people who have a particular knowledge of us because they have known the child that we were.

The relationships we build in adulthood are different, we have less authenticity, we put up barriers, we protect ourselves, something we don't yet know how to do as a child where we are often deeply sincere.

My great childhood friend has remained one of my best friends for thirty years and she will always remain very important in my life.

I wanted to talk about my adolescence.

I was born in 1985,

"Disenchanted" evokes adolescence and self-construction through characters like Sarah or Angélique, but also topical themes on women's conditions.

Why these themes?

What interested me was friendships between women.

I think little girls are taught a form of counterproductive rivalry.

It starts with fairy tales, there is always a rivalry between women, the evil stepmother trying to kill Snow White, Cinderella's stepsisters, etc.

Friendship and female solidarity are rarely put forward.

For example, the mother-in-law always has a bad image, whereas today I have many friends who find themselves mothers-in-law and everything is going well.

We talk a lot about male solidarity but rarely about female solidarity.

That's really the story of Les

.

Do you do extensive research before writing or do you let inspiration come to you as you write?

A bit of both.

I do research out of curiosity on certain points, places, the professions of my characters… I watch videos, photos or even blog articles, to get in the mood.

For example, for

, I read quite a lot about the affair of little Grégory, not to know all the details but above all to see how the investigation was handled and the impact it had socially.

For the rest, I leave it to the imagination: it will be enriched over the course of the writing process.

I also do small research sessions as I write to enrich my novel, for example, here, I investigated the Côte d'Opale where my plot takes place.

Research feeds history.

But my novels being very contemporary, I am not one of the writers who do months of research before starting to write.

The story, I knew it, but I had a lot of headaches about how to tell it.

In particular, I took a long time to find who would be the narrator of this story.

Can you use three words to describe “Disenchanted” and convince your future readers?

So I would say: solidarity, sea, childhood friendships.

Interview by Holly Goli for 20 Minutes

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