Anna Gavalda: "Together you are less alone"
The book: Together you are less alone
It's a pretty shabby WG, Philibert, whose family owns the 300-square-meter apartment, knows everything about France's history, but stutters as soon as anyone speaks to him. Franck is a chef in a starred restaurant, but otherwise a rude block with an injured soul. The thin Camille is working in a cleaning crew because she has no strength left for painting. What the three are missing is what they most resist: love. For no one wants to know anything about feelings anymore. Until Paulette moves in, Franck's 83-year-old grandmother, who wants more from life than a place in a nursing home. Together they begin a cautious new beginning.
In "Together Less Together Alone" dares the vision of unconditional affection: four people who choose to be there for one another, defying all their weaknesses and differences.
The author
Anna Gavalda was born in 1970 near Paris. She grew up in the countryside and later studied literature at the Sorbonne. Your debut "I wish someone would be waiting for me somewhere" was the surprise success of 1999. Meanwhile, she is one of France's most successful authors. Anna Gavalda is the mother of two children and lives in Melun, near Paris.
ChroniquesDuVasteMonde Book Edition "Die Liebesromane" order
Order the entire ChroniquesDuVasteMonde book edition "Die Liebesromane" right here in our shop and save over 40 Euro compared to the single purchase.
Leseprobe "Together you are less alone"
Paulette Lestafier was not as crazy as people claimed. Of course, she knew when the day was, and she had nothing else to do but count the days, wait for her, and forget again. She knew very well that it was Wednesday. Besides, she was done! Had put on her coat, grabbed her basket and collected her discount market. She had even heard the Yvonne's car from afar. But then the cat was at the door, hungry, and when she bent down to put the bowl back to her, she had fallen and hit her head on the bottom step. Paulette Lestafier often fell, but that was her secret. She was not allowed to tell anyone, nobody. "Nobody, do you hear?" she sharpened herself. "Neither Yvonne nor the doctor and certainly not your boy ..."
She had to get up slowly, wait for the objects to all look normal again, apply iodine and cover their cursed bruises. The bruises of Paulette were never blue. They were yellow, green or light purple and long visible. Much too long. Several months sometimes. It was hard to hide. People asked her why she was always running around like in the dead of winter, why she wore stockings and never took off the cardigan. Especially the little one got on her nerves:
"Hey, granny, what's that? Take out the rubbish, you're going to get hot!" No, Paulette Lestafier was not crazy at all. She knew that the huge bruises that would not go away would cause her much trouble.
She knew how old, useless women like her ended. Who allowed the couch grass to proliferate in the vegetable garden and clung to the furniture so as not to fall. The old people, who did not get the thread through the eye of the needle and did not know how to turn up the TV. The all buttons of the remote control tried and at the end howled in anger pulled the plug.
Tiny, bitter tears.
With his head in his hands in front of a silent TV. And then? Nothing more? No more noise in this house? No votes? No more? Because you supposedly forgot the color of the buttons? He stuck colored labels to it, the little one, he stuck labels on you! One for the programs, one for the volume and one for the stop button! Come on, Paulette! Stop howling and look at the labels!
Do not scold me, you. They have not been there for a long time, the labels. They broke up almost immediately. For months, I'm looking for the button, because I hear nothing, because I only see the pictures that murmur softly.
Now do not yell like that, you make me completely deaf.
"Paulette, Paulette, are you there?" Yvonne cursed. She froze, pressed her scarf tighter to her chest and cursed again. She did not like being late for the supermarket. Not at all.
Sighing, she returned to her car, switched off the engine and took off her cap. The Paulette was certainly back in the garden. Paulette was always in the backyard.Sat on the bench next to the empty rabbit stables. For hours she sat there, perhaps from morning to night, upright, motionless, patient, her hands on her knees, with an absent look.
Paulette talked to herself, talked to the dead, and prayed for the living. He spoke with the flowers, the lettuce plantlets, the tits and their shadow. Paulette became senile and no longer knew when which day was. Today was Wednesday, and Wednesday was called Shopping. Yvonne, whom she had been picking up every week for more than ten years, raised the side-door latch and groaned, "What a pity ..."
What a pity to age, what a shame to be so alone, and what a pity, too late to come to the supermarket and find no more shopping trolleys next to the cash register. But no. The garden was empty.
The old woman began to worry. She walked around the house and held her hands like blinders to the glass to see what the silence was all about.
"Almighty!" she exclaimed as she saw her friend lying on the tile floor in the kitchen. Out of sheer terror, the good woman somehow crossed herself, confused the son with the Holy Spirit, cursed a bit, and searched for tools in the tool shed. With a hoe she slammed the disc, then she swung with enormous effort on the windowsill.
With difficulty she came through the room, knelt down and lifted the head of the old woman who bathed in a pink puddle, in which milk and blood had already mixed. "Hey, Paulette, are you dead, are you dead now?" The cat licked the ground, purring, and did not care about the drama, the decency, and the scattered shards of glass all around.
