" Une famille normale "
Novel
- Nominated for : The Discovery Grant 2016
« Cassiopée and Damien make love only on Tuesdays, when the children have their extracurricular activities. Lucie also made love on Tuesdays, while her parents believe she is in the dance class. And Benjamin draws solar system on the walls of his room. But why does Cassiopée prove to be irremediably unable to cry, even about the death of his own mother? And what whim suddenly takes Damien to empty the flat of the half of his pieces of furniture? They don’t speak to each other much, and undoubtedly they understand each other even less. But they pull the wool over the eyes. Until when? »
- presentation of the editor
« Peculiar first novel. Everything is identical, everything is different. Identical to TV films or ordinary mini-series - and so French - about the daily home life of vaguely connected lower middle class persons, parents, children, mates and even granny... And deeply different by detachment, irony, melancholy also. Garance Meillon explores mazes of a today's family obviously without stories. With two quadra parents who seem to like each other still, in spite of their co-habitation without surprises: Cassiopée (who detests the forename given by his hippy mom) and Damien, in the too green cap. And their two children rather bright: Lucie, 16 years old and sexually stamped, Benjamin, 13 years old, dreamer and introvert. Everything breaks down when this hippy grandmother which Cassiopée did not see any more dies, what she receives with a dry heart. Not so simple... The time of a mourning which reappraises everything, the normal family confronts its demons. Are those also normal? Funnily described - every character expresses himself alternately to the first person - they dig anyway just above feather of fine family, conjugal, emotional suffering. Of those who normally are not confessed. »
Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama, January 26th, 2016