Préface de "la Mémoire des Murs" (7 mai 2008, EHO)

"J’ai toujours été attirée par les maisons, les appartements, leurs secrets, leurs mystères. Comment, lorsqu’on entre dans un endroit, on peut s’y sentir merveilleusement bien, ou au contraire, très mal. Je ne parle pas de fantômes, d’apparitions, simplement de la sensation puissante qu’une demeure peut exercer sur vous, malgré vous. Il y a une dizaine d’années, j’avais emménagé avec ma famille rue D., une jolie rue du quartier de Montparnasse. Je connaissais mal cet arrondissement et je me souviens de l’avoir découvert avec plaisir. Puis un jour, j’ai su, par une voisine prolixe, qu’un tueur en série notoire avait assassiné sa première victime en 1991 dans un immeuble qui jouxtait pratiquement le mien. Elle m’avait même montré la fenêtre au dernier étage, celle où s’était déroulé le crime. Une jeune femme de dix-neuf ans, un meurtre laissé longtemps irrésolu. Je me souviens que cette nouvelle m’avait glacée, même si ce terrible fait divers avait déjà dix ans.

Un soir d’hiver, alors que je rentrais tard, seule, et que je me hâtais le long de la rue subitement déserte, j’ai levé les yeux vers la fameuse fenêtre. Elle brillait dans la nuit froide, et j’ai compris avec une sorte de stupéfaction horrifiée, que quelqu’un vivait là, dormait là, dans ces murs marqués par le crime. Comment était-ce possible ? Ces locataires savaient-ils que leur studio avait abrité un crime atroce ? Leur avait-on dit au moment de signer le bail ? Ressentaient-ils quelque chose entre ces murs teintés de sang ? C’est alors que j’ai commencé à écrire ce court et noir roman, que j’ai imaginé la vie d’une femme ordinaire, Pascaline Malon, qui en emménageant dans un appartement estampillé par un drame, allait faire remonter malgré elle une blessure secrète…

C’est en écrivant la Mémoire des Murs, que j’ai entamé un voyage étrange et marquant à travers la capitale. Un voyage mâtiné de violence, de douleur. Oui, Paris n’avait cessé de connaître des événements barbares, des conflits cruels plus ou moins connus, plus ou moins oubliés avec le temps, les années. La deuxième guerre mondiale en particulier avait laissé des stigmates encore présents, et je me souviens de m’être penchée sur ces photographies pas si lointaines d’une capitale soumise, hachurée de croix gammées et de lettres gothiques.

Dans mes recherches, une adresse revenait sans cesse, la rue Nélaton. Le Vel d’Hiv. Oui, bien sûr, j’avais entendu parler de la rafle du Vel d’Hiv, mais je ne l’avais pas apprise au collège, dans les années 70. Je ne savais pas grand-chose de l’organisation de cette rafle, du rôle exact de la police française, du nombre d’enfants raflés, de leur sort.

Tout en écrivant la Mémoire des Murs, je me suis rendue rue Nélaton, dans le 15° arrondissement, pas loin de chez moi. J’ai été frappée par la tristesse de cette rue, par cette petite plaque qu’on cherche longtemps, et qui se trouve boulevard de Grenelle, sur un édifice moderne qui a remplacé le Vel d’Hiv en 1959 et qui abrite à présent une annexe du Ministère de l’Intérieur, ironie suprême. J’ai été tellement marquée par cette vision que je l’ai intégrée dans ce présent roman. Et c’est à partir de ce jour là que j’ai commencé mon enquête. Savoir comment s’était déroulée cette rafle. Tout savoir sur le 16 juillet 1942.

Ce que je ne savais pas encore, c’était que Pascaline Malon et ses souffrances enfouies allait ouvrir la porte à Sarah Starzcynski et Julia Jarmond, mes héroïnes de Elle s'appelait Sarah dont j’ai commencé la redaction en juillet 2002, immédiatement après avoir terminé la Memoire de Murs. "

TR

Parution simultanée le 7 mai 2008 de la Mémoire des Murs (EHO) etElle s'appelait Sarah (Livre de Poche)

From « Walls remember » to « Sarah’s Key »

I’ve always been attracted to houses, apartments, and their mysterious secrets. How, when you enter a place, you can feel peaceful, or on the contrary, horribly uneasy. I don’t mean ghosts, apparitions, just the powerful sensation of what a house can unconsciously bring out in you. Ten years ago, I moved into a new apartment with my family, on pleasant rue D, in the Montparnasse area. I wasn’t familiar with that arrondissement, and I remember discovering it with pleasure. One day, my talkative neighbor told me a notorious serial killer had murdered his first victim in the next door building, back in 1991. She even pointed out the very window, on the last floor, where the crime had taken place. A 19 year old girl, a murder that had gone unresolved for a long time. I remember being chilled by the neighbor’s words, even if the killing had happened over ten years ago.
One night, as I was hurrying home alone along the deserted street, I glanced up to the infamous window. Bright lights shone out into the cold darkness and I understood, horror-struck, that someone was actually living in that room, sleeping in blood-tainted walls. How was that possible ? Did the people living there know that their studio had harbored a murder ? Had anybody told them when they signed their lease ?
It was shortly after that night that I began to write “La Mémoire des Murs”, a short, dark novel about an ordinary divorcée, Pascaline Malon, who moves into an apartment marked by horror and how this will trigger a secret vulnerability deep within her.
As I wrote this book, I began a strange and poignant journey through the streets of Paris. A tour branded by violence and pain. For centuries, Paris has had its share of barbaric events, cruel historical conflicts erased by time. WW2 in particular, has left traces that are still visible, I noticed, as I examined not so ancient photographs of an occupied capital barred by the harshness of swastikas and Gothic lettering. During my research, an address kept coming back, again and again. Rue Nélaton. The Vel d’Hiv. Yes, of course, I’d heard of the great Vel d’Hiv round up, but I had not learned about at high school, in the 70’s. I did not know much about the organization of the round-up, the precise role the French police played, the number of children involved, nor their exact fate.
I went to the rue Nélaton, in the XV arrondissement, not far from where I live. I was struck by the sadness of the street, by the small plaque one has to look for, which is not easy to find, on the boulevard de Grenelle. The Vel d’Hiv was torn down in 1959, and it is at present a modern building which stands in its place, an annex of the ministry of the interior, which I found most ironic. I included that vision in “La Memoire des Murs”, pages 113 and 114.

I started researching the Vel d’Hiv round up that very day. I needed to know exactly how the round up took place, I wanted to know every last detail about July 16th 1942, about that black Thursday still shrouded by taboo and shame sixty years later.
But I didn’t know, then, that Pascaline Malon and her secret sufferings was going to lead the way to Sarah Starzynski and Julia Jarmond, my heroines of “Sarah’s Key”, which I started to write in July 2002, immediately after having finished “La Memoire des Murs”.

TR

Sarah's Key readers from the USA and Canada, as well as Germany and England, are eager for book-club and reading group questions and often end up on this blog hoping to find some !

These will soon be published in the September 2008 Saint Martin's Press paperback and  on their Gold reading group website ,  as well as in the August 2008 publication of Sarahs Schlüssel (Berlin Verlag). 

Book-club questions will also be available on  the Hachette Livre Australia website as from April 2008.

Large print editions of Sarah's Key  are available at Thorndike Press  (in English) and Libra Diffusio (in French).





Author photo copyright Matsas/Opale Agency

What was the inspiration for your book?
I have always been interested in places and houses. And how places and houses keep memories, how walls can talk. I was browsing on the Internet about places in Paris where dark deeds had happened, and fell upon a website describing the  rue Nélaton, in the 15^th arrondissement, not far from where I live. That was where the great Vel d’Hiv roundup took place on July 16^th 1942. I realized I didn’t know much about what exactly happened that day. I was not taught about this event at school, during the 70’s. And it still seemed to be shrouded by some kind of taboo. So I started reading and researching.

How and why did you start working on this book?

As I progressed through my research, I was moved, appalled by what I discovered concerning the Vel d’Hiv roundup, especially about what happened to those 4000 Jewish children, and I knew I had to write about it. I needed to write about it. But I also knew it could not be a historical novel, it had to have a more contemporary feel to it. And that’s how I imagined Julia’s story taking place today, linked to Sarah’s, back in the 40’s.

What kind of experience has writing your book been for you (fun, exciting, agonizing…)?

Writing Sarah’s Key has been a powerful experience. First of all, reverting to my mother tongue after years of writing novels in French felt exhilarating. Like coming home afer a long trip.  Secondly, researching those dark times of France’s past, the Occupation, the Vichy years, was tremendously enriching. But sobering, too. 

Tell us anything about you as a working writer that you think might be interesting or unusual:

  Being half French, half English makes me “unusual”, I guess, and the fact that I grew up learning two languages, that I lived both in France, England and America, as well.  I never know which language I dream in. But I always knew I wanted to write Sarah’s Key in English. 

  Writing Sarah’s Key took me to Drancy and Beaune La Rolande, places around Paris which have a dreaded past that cannot be forgotten despite time going by. My visits there were poignant and memorable. And it  was also through this book that I met Heloïse d’Ormesson and Gilles Cohen-Solal, my French publishers, who hold world rights to Sarah’s Key, and whose enthusiasm concerning Sarah –and me— have added a whole lot of excitement to my career as a writer.
 

 Who are your favorite authors? 
I admire Daphne du Maurier, Virginia Woolf, Henry James, Irène Nemirovsky, Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, Edgar Allen Poe. And Paul Auster, Joanna Trollope, Anita Shreeve, Penelope Lively, A.S Byatt,  JM Coetzee, Maggie O’Farrell, Tracy Chevalier, Joyce Carol Oates and Sarah Waters.

  

Benvenuti al blog di "La Chiave di Sarah" !

Qui soni gli articoli dei giornali che parlano de "La Chiave di Sarah" nel vostro paese.

Si vuoloete mettervi in contatto con l'autrice de "La Chiave di Sarah", clicca QUI.

 Mondadori, Italia