Literature without borders

Audrée Wilhelmy, the power of nature, women and storytelling

Audio 29:00

Quebec writer Audrée Wilhelmy in the studio at RFI (June 2022).

© Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint/RFI

By: Catherine Fruchon-Toussaint

2 mins

Born in Cap-Rouge in 1985, Audrée Wilhelmy lives between the fields and the forest of Sainte-Élisabeth, Quebec.

After "Les Sangs" (Sade Prize 2015) and "Le Corps des Bêtes" (2018, Finalist of the 2019 France-Canada Prize), "Blanc Résine" is his third novel published in France.

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White Resin © Grasset

"Her name is Daã. Born in a convent nestled in the heart of the boreal forest and built by women, she grew up free, far from the world of men, among twenty-four nuns. They reign over Cusoke, a land of rocks and ice where social codes are reinvented Wild child, Daã speaks the language of Ina Maka, the Earth-Mother, from whom she learns cycles, orders and laws.

His name is Laura.

Child albino rejected by the others, son of worker of the Khole Co mine, he would like to melt among the black faces of the miners.

But after the death of his mother, his father dreams of a better destiny for him than his, far from galleries and murderous misery.

Sent to the city, he will become a doctor in spite of himself. 

Everything opposes this woman-forest and this boy-translucent, two marginals who aspire, one to be accepted, the other to emancipate.

But one day their destinies cross and love binds them.

Blanc Résine tells their story.

With Laure, Daã will live in town, will have three children.

But she will never agree to bend to the laws of men.

And that has a price.

Simultaneously realistic tale, romantic drama and feminist fable, Blanc Résine transports us to a harsh and disturbing universe, in the heart of nature, to delve into our most extreme feelings: love, desire, anger.

Audrée Wilhelmy deploys her wild lyricism and her imagination with rare maturity and mastery.

She thus signs an unclassifiable, spectacular book."

(Presentation

by Grasset editions

).

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Audrée Wilhelmy, without taboo