342 pg.
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Delphine-Vigan/dp/1620404850
Review by Maria Andrade
One day, Delphine de Vigan entered her mother Lucile’s apartment in Paris and found that she had been dead for several days. This brutal scene becomes the detonating event of Nothing Holds Back the Night, a book that is an exploration of what may have led to that moment. A few days after the discovery, an innocent question from her son forces de Vigan to come to terms with the fact that her mother committed suicide, and she finally accepts that she must write about Lucile. De Vigan had been reluctant to be another one of those people who write books about their mother, but she finally accepts the need do it and, as we learn, to delve into painful episodes of the family past. She reads family documents, listens to tapes, and talks to relatives, as she sets out to write about her large, eccentric family, about her mother, and about herself.
The text that results from this investigation into her own family history is unconventional in many ways. The beginning part of the book reads like a novel: based on all the information she has gathered, de Vigan writes a vivid account of her mother’s childhood and adolescence as one of the older siblings of a large family. We learn that she is beautiful, and we follow her on her trips to the city in order to work as a child model. De Vigan narrates this section of the book in the third person, as an allegedly external observer who, nonetheless, is constantly reflecting on the fact that she is constructing a fiction, imagining the reactions, thoughts, and feelings of the people involved. This observer takes us into the boisterous everyday life of a Parisian family with eight children during the 1950s and 1960s, and she narrates the joys and the tragedies that marked it as Lucile grows up. In the second part of the book, de Vigan appears on the scene, and she is able to speak about Lucile from the perspective of a child who, along with her sister Violette, gives testimony of her mother’s chaotic and bohemian life, her many lovers, her financial difficulties, her wit and originality, but also her struggles with mental instability which quite directly impact the two girls. The writing becomes progressively more broken as Lucile ages and attempts to keep in touch with reality, and the book breaks off into shorter sections, which do not contribute to the literary effect of the narrative. The reader wonders why the sections become disjointed, but perhaps the reason is that, in her writing, de Vigan is trying to make sense of her own experiences through her words, and that the task is too painful. De Vigan uncovers dark family secrets, events that are too terrible to be talked about and yet, that have haunted the members of the family for years.
There are many fascinating characters in this memoir or non-fiction novel: Liane, the grandmother, with her love of family and her odd fascination with fitness and exercise well into her old age; Georges, her husband, the temperamental publicist who has two apparently irreconcilable sides; Lucile, the child model, the lonely adult who misunderstands reality and withdraws into herself; Jean-Marc, the adopted child who, at a very young age, had already experienced deep suffering. The author captures the world of childhood in all its brightness, and describes its inevitable, repeated, collapse. It is a heart-breaking memoir, the result of having lived through searing experiences. It is not, however, written in anger, but often demonstrates a moving compassion, a love of the lost mother, and a desire to understand her.