Clara Dupont-Monod: "High school students are very open to difference"

After the Femina prize and the Landerneau readers prize, Clara Dupond-Monod has just won the Goncourt des lycéens.

A price that "upsets" her.

She returns for Le Figaro on the writing of this novel and on what this award represents while in high school, she was herself a "great reader".

LE FIGARO.

- What flavor at this price compared to Femina?

Clara DUPONT-MONOD.

-

When I got the Femina, I dedicated the award to the 12 million disabled people in France, and their siblings.

With this price, high school students overwhelm me.

It's great!

That my work is recognized and loved by young people who are the age of my characters, it is absolutely touching.

What do you think the high school students liked?

There is a form of empathy with the characters.

This youth is very open to difference.

It's a way for her to say: "We accept you as you are, regardless of your differences."

It upsets me that teenagers might think this: "These siblings are mine."

"What allows the support and the day before is the different child"

How was this book born?

From an autobiographical base. We had a disabled child in the family who did not live very long. I wanted to tell this story from the point of view of his siblings. Indeed, it is a theme that is not widely used in literature. Siblings are not a frozen world. It is not uncommon to see a younger behave like an older one and vice versa. The siblings are recomposed and reinvented all the time. Very often, one and the same event is therefore not experienced in the same way by the siblings, depending on the place that the child has and I found that interesting.

is also a book on the waking state: the brothers and sisters watch over each other, they watch over their parents who themselves watch over their children.

This is the story of support.

What allows the support and the day before is the different child.

How did the contact with the high school students go?

This is not the first time that I have been on the Goncourt list of high school students.

I find that they always have very pointed and specific questions.

They target elements that are rarely mentioned, they make analogies, bridges between themes.

They have an extremely fine reading.

Which reader were you in high school?

I was a rather lonely, lonely, avid reader.

But I didn't care because my friends were books.

I had a great passion for Emile Zola, discovered in the large library of our house in the Cévennes.

This is how I also read Simenon and also works on the Middle Ages.

I was unsuited in my own way.

So somewhere, with this award, high school students say: "We choose the unsuitable, because we are all."

It is an act of accepting difference.

It is all the more today that the difference can be scary.

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