A review by gorecki
History of Violence by Édouard Louis
3.0
I believe our minds often delete painful memories to protect us: they leave blank spaces where there used to be hurt so we feel that little bit more capable to move. But this is a process that happens on its own - things just blur and fade and you wake up one morning and they’re not there anymore, or they’re too hazy to make sense of.
It’s different when you try to forget something on purpose - it never works. In order to force yourself to forget a specific thing, you need to focus on that thing, envisage it, think about it and know what it is you’re trying to forget, but once you do, you just instil it and give it even more weight. You don’t forget by talking. And when you’re made to talk, when you’re made to repeat, when you’re made to feel not only that this horrible thing has happened to you, but also that you have been somehow stupid or weak or sick to let it happen in the first place, that memory becomes impossible to get rid of. It becomes a part of your physical body.
This is a short and harrowing book: blind trust leading to rape, denial and then obsession. It’s uncomfortable and painful and unsettling. An extremely personal and harrowing account, a sort of exorcism for Louis, who tells his story through his sister’s narration of the events while he sits silently and listens to her describing the events to her husband. A way of keeping himself distanced from his story, maybe (this didn’t happen to me, she’s telling the story), it also kept me distanced, at an arm’s length, and feeling as if his sister is telling the story of someone completely unrelated. Combined with the many political observations and unrelated childhood memories, it slightly lost some of the gripping power I have experienced in Louis’s writing before.
It’s different when you try to forget something on purpose - it never works. In order to force yourself to forget a specific thing, you need to focus on that thing, envisage it, think about it and know what it is you’re trying to forget, but once you do, you just instil it and give it even more weight. You don’t forget by talking. And when you’re made to talk, when you’re made to repeat, when you’re made to feel not only that this horrible thing has happened to you, but also that you have been somehow stupid or weak or sick to let it happen in the first place, that memory becomes impossible to get rid of. It becomes a part of your physical body.
This is a short and harrowing book: blind trust leading to rape, denial and then obsession. It’s uncomfortable and painful and unsettling. An extremely personal and harrowing account, a sort of exorcism for Louis, who tells his story through his sister’s narration of the events while he sits silently and listens to her describing the events to her husband. A way of keeping himself distanced from his story, maybe (this didn’t happen to me, she’s telling the story), it also kept me distanced, at an arm’s length, and feeling as if his sister is telling the story of someone completely unrelated. Combined with the many political observations and unrelated childhood memories, it slightly lost some of the gripping power I have experienced in Louis’s writing before.