It was in 2008, in the beautiful island of Jersey.
The police discover a real mass grave under the building of the orphanage which had closed its doors in 1986. A terrible scandal.
Dozens of children placed in Public Assistance had suffered sexual abuse, mistreatment, humiliation, deprivation for twenty years in this building in Haut de la Garenne bordering the forest at the exit of the village.
It is from this story that Maud Simonnot composed
L'Heure des Oiseaux
.
Attention, we are far from the reconstruction of a news item.
It's a book about secrecy, about the margins, about this wounded childhood which remains luminous despite everything.
With this new title, Simonnot is building a coherent cycle with
La Nuit pour adresse
(2017), dedicated to Robert McAlmon, then
L'Enfant celeste
(2020)
,
and we can add his anthology,
Le Goût de la forêt
.
Read also
The land of shadows, by Tristan Jordis: the banquet of specters
The Hour of the Birds
and
The Celestial Child
resonate together, in opposition.
Both are set on an island.
If in the first Mary and…
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