Marie Chaix

Silences, or a Woman's Life

Marie Chaix

A woman falls into a coma. Perhaps she's going to die. Becoming the sleeper's shadow, the woman's daughter will accompany her mother through six weeks of agony, bearing witness to the prolonged death imposed upon her by the monstrous machine of modern medicine. During this final voyage through the fog, the narrator attempts to recover the vivacious woman she knew before this illness: the mad lover, the romantic spouse, the musician who sacrificed her dreams to the reality of life with her husband. By assembling her memories of the dying woman, gluing together scraps of recollections like puzzle pieces, Marie Chaix reconstructs the portrait of a woman who she deeply loved—a blurred silhouette forever fixed in that «museum of dust» where each life ends.