Angélique Garcia, author from Lot: “Le Goncourt 2022 echoes like the echo of my book, my grief”
Angélique Garcia, author from Lot: “Le Goncourt 2022 echoes like the echo of my book, my grief”
Sitting down at the keyboard of her computer to write the moving pages of her book “When the night is in the sky”, Angélique Garcia did not imagine that “Live fast”, the work of Brigitte Giraud, Goncourt Prize 2022, would resonate with his own story as much. Two authors tell a story of mourning. Each recounts the death of his companion. Two poignant stories full of truth and imbued with hope, because even if death serves as a background for the two authors, it is life that wins.
Angélique Garcia, yoga teacher in Cahors and journalist for “Inexploré” magazine, cultivates a Zen attitude, listening to others. She always manages to positively interpret even the smallest sign that life and fate send her to extract strength, positive energy from the painful past. Reasons to live and simply move forward after losing the one with whom she shared a thousand and one joys and built a multitude of projects… shattered by death. The man of her life lives in the book of her story.
Simon inspires and guides Angelique. She felt the need to write the lines of life on death. This without excess of darkness to speak about this grief like no one else before, with a very direct style that brings all its truth, its thoughts about the death that is seen to come, but which does not have the power to destroy all hopes.
Poetry is well anchored in each chapter of this book of rare soft realism, never tearful description and writing of the daily life that Angélique lived until Simon’s last breath and his last mad hopes. Hope for victory over the disease.
An identical view of death and reconstruction
“I believed in it until the end, even though I was preparing for a fatal outcome. Death that Brigitte Giraud talks about live fast it sure doesn’t look like Simon’s. She arrived suddenly after a motorcycle accident. But his literary reflection after this drama, his approach to mourning, his descriptions and formulas with words and so repeated like mine to open horizons or wonder about fate, fate, mourning and life after the loss of a loved one have many similarities with what I wrote. Le Goncourt echoes like the echo of my book, my sorrow. Although our lives are different. I have the impression that we share the same view of death and reconstruction. And Simon wanted to live fast, because he wanted to realize projects quickly, to discover beautiful things in life, to share them”, confides Angélique Garcia emotionally and sincerely.
A book that eases and soothes
“I wanted to leave a mark. During Simon’s illness. I wrote urgently for myself and to help people by explaining how the other continued to exist despite the physical separation. This touches on the theme of synchronicity, the presence of the other through meaningful signs that may seem esoteric, but I strongly believe in it,” she continues.
Angelique thought a lot about death and its consequences. His book is an optimistic work.
What if these signs are real? Angelique does not seek to influence reality. She finds signs without provoking and that’s good for her. His book eases and soothes.
“Simon himself was on a spiritual quest. When he left, he left this light that allowed me to see life differently. It directed me towards contemplation. Now I have a different view of nature and life. Simon gave me incredible and unconditional strength,” she says.
Angélique Garcia at the contract signing on Saturday and Sunday in Arcambalo
His book was published in June 2020 by the Kapluma publishing house. His powerful resonance with the Goncourt-winning work and this sensitive theme of mourning brought his story back into the limelight. This is more than ever since Angélique will present “When the night is in the sky” and dedicate it at the festival of books and paintings on Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 November at the Espace culturel et de loisirs d’Arcambal. The Goncourt prize and her disturbing story of similarities awakened Angélique’s desire to speak to the public with an open heart. And if so, that was also a sign. Who knows ?
