Violette d'Urso: "I looked for my father everywhere"

One could read Violette d'Urso's first book,

as a tribute to a father who died too soon (Italian businessman Luigi d'Urso), who at the same time throws a sometimes direct, sometimes indirect light on her ties with her mother, Ines de la Fressange, the quintessential incarnation of Parisian chic, her country of heart, Italy, and the family she formed there by leaving for the trail of a multi-faceted man.

But it is also and above all a learning novel with a sensitive pen, where the lifting of secrets (the much-loved father was a drug addict, and the heart attack that cost him his life was due to the exhaustion of a body undermined by heroin) allows a young girl in search of her origins to

free from the past.

Interview.

On video,

Aftersun

, the trailer

Why I wrote this novel

“I've wanted to write this book since my father died, when I was 6 years old.

It couldn't end there – I had to tell his story.

Yesterday, I also found a sheet of paper dated August 25, 2008, where I had drawn the cover of a book entitled: "The Book of Violette d'Urso"... I have been writing for a long time ( I can't live without writing) but there, I wanted to write a novel, and this desire was concomitant with the research I was conducting to learn more about my father.

If I had known everything about him, this book would never have seen the light of day, and to fill in the blanks, I imagined, invented, embroidered a lot.

I am an orphan and meeting people who have been through what I had been through has helped me,

"

"

MS

My father, this hero

“As I progressed in my research, I realized that my father would probably have been the best person to understand me, because he too lost his mother very early, at 9 years old.

He compensated for this lack with drugs, I went in search of words.

I wrote the book I wish I had found.

And writing it, I got answers… My father was an incredible person, a character from a novel like there isn't any more.

Original, cultured, funny, taking everything with humour, both Neapolitan and English, capable of maintaining many friendships but also of spending weeks, months in seclusion studying things that only interested him.

Someone

one who seemed lost in the party world and who at the same time was sensitive and enlightened… I think he would have been proud to have his daughter write, and have her write about him.

He would be very proud of it."

It also kind of forced me to grieve a second time – for the person I thought he was.

Violet d'Urso

The weight of secrecy

“In my family, we saved ourselves from what happened by making a good story out of it.

And that's fine: without it, my sisters and I might not have become the balanced and happy people that we are.

But when I realized that everything I believed had little to do with the truth, I realized that my grief hadn't been done – perhaps because secrecy keeps wounds from healing. , sometimes for generations.

As if we suffered the secret even though we didn't know it existed... That preserved me, but discovering all these new facets of my father also in a way forced me to make a second mourning - that of the person. who I thought he was."

Read alsoAdèle Van Reeth: "What does it mean to wait for a child when you have just lost your father?"

Trips to Italy

“In Italy, I looked for my father everywhere while having few elements;

sometimes I only had the names of towns.

That's why

has so many descriptions of Italian cities.

If I also decided to start from the story of my father, it is because it was very romantic and allowed to summon elements that interested me, like this

 : the aristocracy of the South, a world in the process of rocking, an elegance that no longer has any place and yet persists.

My father was one of the last representatives of this world.

I am thinking, for example, of Palermo, “the only city where beggars can live in palaces”, I was told one day, with families who only partially inhabit said palaces because everything else is falling into ruins. … I visited all these cities alone, as in

by Stendhal, with the feeling of falling into another century – a dive into the past which paradoxically allowed me to grow.”

The book is about my father, but my mother is not absent

Violet d'Urso

Family portrait

“

has changed can be read as a family portrait in the broad sense, with the close family who has experienced a tragedy and the Italian family that Anna is building.

Of course, I took a lot of liberties with my family: I have three sisters and not two, and if the character of Rosalie includes traits of my sisters, that of Molly is totally fictional.

The book is about my father, but my mother is not absent.

I didn't want the novel to be centered on the character of the mother, but she is there in the decisive moments.

At the beginning, of course, because I evoke a child's life, but later also: she is the one who allows the book to be made because she lets the narrator go alone to Italy.

I find that she is in her right place, guiding her daughter from a distance with great elegance.

My mother and I

“We didn't talk so much with my mother about the portrait I paint of the mother in the book.

Unlike other people around me, she didn't look inside herself, didn't try to determine what was or wasn't inspired by her.

She always encouraged me to write, she knew what my dream was, while being aware of the difficulties.

It's a very lonely, hard process, almost against the tide of life.

When I was asked: “What are you doing at the moment?”

And that I answered: “I write.”

It was always followed by: “Yes, but what are you doing?”… I spent a lot of time on this text, and I spent a lot of time finding a publisher who understood me and who understood my literary project.

Alix Penent from Flammarion thus helped me enormously to structure the text, so that each chapter would move things forward when I had a tendency to contemplation and digression, and I think my mother is proud that I don't didn't give in to the easy way, that I worked and reworked my book until I was satisfied with it.

I recently found a video where she makes me paint and where I announce: “Here, mom, I'm done!”

And when I was 4 years old, she replied: “No, but you could develop that motif, add that here…” She always pushed me to go further.

She is a very inspiring, sensitive, funny, intelligent person, and there would be a lot of things to say and write about her.

But we all know who she is and I don't want to be reduced to "the daughter of".