“And life resumed its course” is the third novel in Catherine Bardon’s famous literary saga. In “And life resumed its course”, the writer opens a new chapter in the history of the Rosenhecks after the successes of The uprooted and The American.
Ruth, Almah’s daughter, heroine of the Uprooted, is happy to have finally returned to the lands of her childhood in the Dominican Republic, with her child Gaya. Her experience in America is behind her. Little by little, life resumes its course, the years pass … Until this soft atmosphere is weakened by the return of her childhood friend Lizzie, ill. Ruth then never ceases to want to get her friend back on her feet and engages in it with remarkable quiet strength.
A fascinating historical fresco
There is something bewitching about Catherine Bardon, and it does not displease us. His passion for the Dominican Republic fascinates as the details are rich, educational and precise. It is over an entire decade that the author has made her reader a witness to history. Ruth takes over the work of her father by working for the newspaper of Sosúa: from the assassination of Martin Luther King to the Vietnam war through the attacks at the Munich Olympics, not to mention the policy of Joaquín Balaguer which shakes up his life in the Dominican Republic, we experience an immersion in a fascinating fresco.
The impressive cultural heritage of the characters
This abundant historical context echoes the multitude of cultures that Ruth and her loved ones have inherited, an intimate story in which we are immersed in a family saga way. Ruth’s wedding, her second pregnancy, her trips to the United States … “There were two continents, four countries, five languages, three generations”, can we read. What to give scale to the characters. Ruth’s life in the United States resurfaces and shakes her relationship with her eldest daughter, Gaya. Almah, meanwhile, reconnects with the ghosts of the past. Then there is Lizzie. At the beginning, fulfilled by her life in California, she returned to the Dominican Republic totally broken. So many routes that we follow tirelessly.
A third volume that is self-sufficient
Despite all these many intertwined stories, this third novel can be read independently of the first two. Catherine Bardon’s pen is so well mastered that when reading, one easily becomes attached to the characters. Whether or not we have followed the adventures, doubts and joys of Almah in the previous volumes, whether or not we have witnessed the fate of Ruth in the United States, this third novel delights with the universal values that are therein. transmitted. If the history of the Rosenhecks is unique, at each Christmas dinner, each family reunion, one has the impression of meeting old acquaintances. And it’s a real happiness …
A new and penultimate epic to read absolutely!
And life resumed its course, by Catherine Bardon, will be released on April 8, 2021 on Pocket.
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Melanie Bonvard
Mélanie deciphers pop culture from a societal angle and questions the female gaze in films or even series, because everything is a question of gaze, she …