love me tender

Constance Debré

(Flammarion, 192 pages, 2020)

***WINNER OF LE PRIX DES INROCKUPTIBLES***

***ENGLISH TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE***

After she left Laurent, her husband of twenty years, Constance Debré went on to explore her long-held attraction for women. She abandoned her career as a lawyer, along with the material comforts that came with it, in order to devote herself to writing. But there was a heavy cost to her newly found freedom. She lost custody of her eight-year-old son, Paul. In this powerful account, Debré paints for us the portrait of a woman not only exploring new ways of relating to her body and sexuality, but also radically transforming her relationships to the worlds of work, money, family, and love.

Debré plainly talks about the slow grind of family court. She speaks of her ex-husband’s vindictive battle to separate her from their son. Laurent’s insidious accusations during the divorce hearing cast enough doubt on her moral standing that she is left with limited visitation rights: Under the supervision of social workers, she is allowed to see Paul for one hour every two weeks in a specified meeting space.

Deprived of her child, Debré strips herself bare of her possessions. She leaves her two-bedroom apartment for a studio the size of a monastic cell. She bounces from one borrowed apartment to another, from hotel room to hotel room. She engages in mostly brief affairs with numerous women, one never quite like the other, all varying in age, body types, language, and lifestyles. But the closer Debré gets to them, the more distant she feels. Apart from cigarettes and sex, she leads an ascetic existence, sleeping late and rising early, reading, and writing. She swims every day, sculpting a new lean and strong body as if this daily discipline could render her impervious to the emotions that threaten to engulf her. She stews in the pain of separation from her son, avoiding parks and playgrounds, fleeing children as “if they were cluster bombs ready to explode . . . riddl[ing] her body with pieces of shrapnel.”

Love Me Tender speaks courageously of love in its many forms. Debré’s painful loss challenges her to reframe what it means to be a mother beyond conventional expectations. She concisely chronicles her sorrow without self-indulgence. Yet her stoicism does not prevent her boldly honest account from touching us deeply, and her tenderness, when it surfaces, is all the more poignant. It is only when grief releases her from its grasp that she can allow herself to love and be loved.

Constance Debré left her career as a lawyer to become a writer. She has written three other novels, Play Boy (Editions Stock, 2018, Prix de la Coupole 2018), Un peu là, beaucoup ailleurs (Le Rocher, 2004), which won the 2005 Prix Contrepoint, and Manuel pratique de l'idéal Abécédaire de survie (Le Rocher, 2004).