Sans intention de nuire by Michèle Terdiman

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sans intention de nuire by Michèle Terdiman Joseph A. Reiter Terdiman, Michèle. Sans intention de nuire. Mercure de France 2021. ISBN 978-2-7152-5594-4. Pp. 128. Alternating fictionalized diary and interior monologue, this debut novel effectively and imaginatively takes up the subject of memory, and at the same time points out the complexities of Belgian society. Terdiman presents Madame Lepire, a septuagenarian, who wants to forget the past, concentrate on the present and not revisit memories. For example, she has an absolute aversion to photos. Although healthy and alert, she has surprisingly chosen to live in a retirement home on the outskirts of Brussels, far removed from the sites that marked her life which include a childhood in a post-World War II Flemish village, student days in Paris, some years in the Congo, a hippy sojourn in Afghanistan among others. The grounds of the home are bucolic and seem to promise respite, but no sooner there, the sight of the trees and the scent of lilacs, like Proust’s madeleine, reawaken long forgotten events, “le plus léger parfum ranime un fracas de souvenirs” (7). Some are pleasant—Sunday mornings with her father, her son as a child, hikes in the Lozère. Others painful—the prejudices her father endured: “Le clan maternel isole Lucien [...] dans l’arène de ses complicités malsaines. Ils sont flamingants et citadins, il est wallon et villageois” (14); her mother’s nervous breakdowns; visits to a frequently imprisoned uncle whose crimes are whitewashed by the family. She realizes, too, that memory may not be accurate or trustworthy. In addition, it seems that the institutional administration feels that memory coaching is positive therapy for the residents, perhaps an Alzheimer inhibitor. The employee, Nadja, sometimes gently, other times pointedly, probes into Madame Lepire’s past. Initially the resentful narrator responds with half-truths and seems to enjoy having the upper hand, but gradually she reveals more than she intends. It is, however, outside interference that forces her to confront and analyze an event that occurred fifty years earlier. An official arrives to inform her that the investigation into the unsolved death of Doctor Raymond Delou would be reopened, and that she would certainly be called upon to testify. Delou, a psychiatrist who had treated her mother, became a family friend and a frequent presence in the Lepire home. Improbably, and the sole weak point in this otherwise fascinating tale, there is the presence of Delou’s son, now in his fifties, as coiffeur at the home. Though Madame Lepire tells herself, “Je ne veux pas ouvrir une porte que je ne saurai refermer” (18), the repressed memories of details leading to the doctor’s drowning are unavoidable. The title of the book is ironic, for Madame Lepire at one point had every intention to harm, but as the reader discovers, she is not the perpetrator of the crime, and Terdiman handles the unraveling of the mystery adeptly. The reader will find interesting and informative, as well, how Madame Lepire’s recollections often reflect a Belgian collective memory, on topics such as colonialism, racism, the monarchy, right-wing sympathies, and ethnicity. [End Page 259] Joseph A. Reiter Phillips Exeter Academy (NH), emeritus Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French