Biography

Adelaide de Clermont-Tonnerre, 33, former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure, tried her hand at investment banking in France and Mexico before becoming a columnist and journalist. She is currently section editor of the cultural pages of the magazine Point de Vue.

"It was in passing a news stand in the Boulevard Pierre-Seymard, Nice, that Ondine learned about her mother's suicide, the great writer Zita Chalitzine. She was found in a car, wrapped in a beautiful white fur coat. Zita, who had spent her life in scandals, does not leave her reputation behind her. And just before disappearing, she was still being talked about : she would have only lent her name on the books that she made successful. Ondine does not want to know her progenitor, who was a pale imitation of what a mother should have been and who never wanted to tell her who her father was. And yet, when tidying the affairs of Zita, after the funeral, Ondine discovers her mother's last book, an unpublished autobiography.

The reader enters head-on into the extraordinary life of Zita, poor girl, raised in the lodge of her enormous mother, Madame Lourdes.

Having become the protégée of the family owning of the building in which she lives, she discoveres high society, easy life for those who can afford it, culture, fine art. After graduating, she gains her independence by becoming one of Madame Claude's girls, and at the same time the mistress of the great author Romain Kiev. Favourite of all of Paris in the 1970s, she illustrates the time when anything was possible.

Festivals, drugs, Yves Saint-Laurent, beautiful cars, we follow Zita in a whirlwind pre-crisis. But in her fall, in her decay. When one has climbed so high, we can only fall so low." (Introduction by the editor)

In life, we rarely have access to a person so intimately as in when reading his memoirs. In everyday life, thoughts are filtered, the things said can hurt, but they have no body. They arise and then go out, vanish. The things written, if they come from someone you love, are much harder to erase. When words hurt, we can believe that we heard badly or were not meant. When a brutal word freezes on paper, there is no room for doubt. The intention is there. The word keeps its sharpness. Time does not soften it, and with each rereading, we can be hurt again.

"A rebound follows another. Some cords are thick, but the reader flows perfectly in these 70's, outdated Giscardian, past. We might even find the influence of the writer Patrick Besson, a close friend. I take it as a compliment. This is the best of his generation. Unlike his physical aspect, he has such a grace, a lightness of writing. At the same time, he can be violent, intense, accurate. I am less direct more subtle. I just did not want an autofictionnel thing, a headache . Fourrure is an essential accessory for winter 2010. And seasons to come. Good stories, like beautiful clothes are timeless."(Raya Aurélie, Paris Match , February 2, 2010)