Loin de mon père by Véronique Tadjo

Abstract

comment Ann, femme à hautes responsabilités qui ne pense qu’à son travail, néglige sa famille; elle passe à côté de l’anorexie d’Angélique pendant maintes années puis, se rendant finalement compte du problème de sa fille, elle pense le gérer comme dans le monde du travail: “Angélique constitue un dossier ardu” (274). Siac a su cerner les défis que pose la société actuelle, tels que le manque de repères, les rôles inversés entre hommes et femmes, les choix de la femme entre sa carrière et sa famille, la fragilité des couples et la perte des valeurs traditionnelles comme l’honnêteté et la fidélité. C’est également avec justesse et à l’aide d’excellentes descriptions psychologiques, qu’est dépeint l’enfer au quotidien d’Angélique, jeune fille anorexique, qui a succombé à l’un des fléaux les plus difficiles à vaincre pour les adolescentes. Le roman se termine avec une lettre d’aveux et d’excuses d’Ann à sa fille où elle lui demande pardon de l’avoir ignorée dans sa souffrance et d’avoir donné priorité à sa carrière. C’est une lettre d’une grande honnêteté, sans crainte de dire ce qui dérange, comme l’égoïsme dans l’acte de procréer: “Les enfants n’ont pas choisi de naître et si on les a eus, c’est bien parce qu’à priori on avait une intention, une envie. L’envie consiste surtout à prendre. On profite de ses enfants [...] dans un but toujours intéressé” (470). Siac a réussi à tisser un monde d’ambitieux et à révéler les dégâts de l’ambition démesurée. California State University, San Marcos Véronique An ~over TADJO, VÉRONIQUE. Loin de mon père. Arles: Actes sud, 2010. ISBN 978-27427-9127-9. Pp. 189. 18 a. The novel takes place against the background of contemporary Côte d’Ivoire as it emerges hesitantly from civil war. Nina is returning after a long absence in France to assist with the funeral of her father. The title takes on additional levels of meaning as Nina, while drawing closer to the site of her father’s life, finds that she is further from the reality he lived. She discovers one by one the existence of five extramarital children. Her initial shock gives way to considering the unexpected offspring in the light of the traditional African context of polygamy. Nevertheless, Kouadio was French-educated, an internationally respected scientist , married to a white woman: to interpret his conduct in this way seems incongruous , atavistic. Perhaps more noteworthy from a contemporary African woman writer, the mothers of these children play no role in the novel, nor does the effect such a marital configuration may have had on Nina’s mother. Rather, this situation becomes part of a larger generational conflict that underlies the novel, involving politics, language, sorcery, and burial customs. When the second pair of unexpected children come to introduce themselves to her, Nina finds their faces familiar: in fact they came regularly to visit doctor Kouadio; his sisters were privy to the situation and Nina realizes that she was never taught her father’s African language, which we must deduce would have revealed the identity of these children. Though Nina has been away from her native land for so long, as soon as she arrives in Abidjan she integrates herself with the complicated ceremonies and interpersonal diplomacy that the funeral of a public figure and patriarch such as her father require. This perspective allows Tadjo to provide detailed lists and Reviews 409 costs that are of less interest than a developed discussion of human relationships would have been. She finds a journal describing her father’s youth, a curious document written in the third person, focused almost entirely on his academic successes even though it covers the period of his marriage to Nina’s mother. Three other such texts make the father seem even more distant: instructions on countering the effects of witchcraft, a third-person narrative of his meeting with a marabout who “multiplies bank notes” and a laconic...