lady’s hour is the seventh novel by author, blogger and journalist Adele Brio. after the success of sisters (2020), novelist and editorial director of Terfemina once again speaks to the feminine by telling and romanticizing her grandmother’s story. Menny Gregoire has been recruited by RTL for a radio program whose aim is to speak to the listeners, be their confidant, only then success comes. What remains of this legacy fifty years later? Answer with the investigation of Esther, a documentary filmmaker who delves into this history of women and their questions.
With his radio show, Mény Grégoire, a bourgeois recruited by RTL, explores the lives of women and, above all, makes people discover them. like Emmanuel Bayert’s character night travelerHe who listens and gathers up idle talk, I am the voice of women. Beyond simple listening, he clearly communicates with all the women, even if it means interfering in their lives. Target? Both were tackling female taboo subjects at that time (in the 1970s) and were helping each other, Meny Grégoire and Adele Bruy talk to us today with their novel about soreness, better be made really alive. It all begins in the novel in 1932 when the younger Mary, thirteen years old, chooses a more “warrior” first name. It would be Meni, which means “Mary” in Vendée… It’s a tribute, she says, to those who fought, but who are almost never named. However, her mother insists, and reminds her that it is inappropriate for a young girl to fight, create a ruckus “Men’s Game”, “Meni watches her mother vanish like a ghost (…) Meni doesn’t understand why she feels so unfulfilled in the life she has chosen nonetheless”. Novelists write further. And Manny wonders about his bond with the mother he loves but worries about, from whom he feels so distant. Already in the church the voice of the teenager “imposes” next to her father who, after collecting the vagrants, listens to the stories of the “battered life”., Everything is there that has been written for MENI: the likes, the voice, the desire to be heard, the desire to transmit. Adele Brio builds a romantic destiny with this first chapter, the only one dedicated to Meni before radio For her grandmother, about whom she recalls a period in her life. Then we go straight to the 6o-70s. Plus, it’s 2021 and Esther, who is still reeling from a breakup, will soon find herself taking her fate into her own hands. It will also star Suzanne and her sister, Mireille, whose radio show will soon change their lives. A show started in 1967 and which will run till 1981.
Esther deserves the “I” as if she were the double of a novelist who delved into her grandmother’s past to deliver a stirring tale about women’s words, their bodies, and their desires. Esther must “rebuild” herself, she says, as she has “nothing but relief at having put an ocean between my past and me”. Soon there will be Mennie in her life and her desire to write is more than just gathering information for a new collection from a publisher who no longer really cares for her. This collection, in line with the times, is called “Influential Women”. Adele Breu The choice between these two temporalities, these two destinies of women that are intertwined without meeting. Through their two voices, other stories emerge, women come to the fore. The writing is skilful, fluid, up front, the questions realistic and those of 1967 still resonate with our news, as if May 1968 was only a distant memory of liberation. Ultimately trapped in her own suffocating, doomed love story, is the Esther of 2021 any more independent than Manny’s mother in 1932? Questions arise and stories connect, resonate and respond to each other. A great story of femininity, mutual aid and the desire to be completely yourself, at least for the duration of one novel. L’Heure des femmes, in 2023, almost ends with the creation of an association to help afflicted women, as a new sorority is being written, going out with her head held high and finally Esther’s According to the book Desire to Think Like the New Day is no longer repetitive but “full of promise”.
lady’s hour
Editor’s Summary: Paris, 1967. In her early fifties, Meni, a middle-class mother, is recruited by RTL Radio, which decides to renew its programmes. his role ? Get the audience talking. In just a few weeks, it’s a breaking wave. Women all over France trust the “lady of the heart”. Soon, millions of people will be following the show with passion, at leisure. Among them are Mireille and her sister Suzanne, who discover that they too can control their own destiny. As far as Menni’s life is concerned, she is caught between the whirlwind of the liberated society and the tortures she has been subjected to till May 68, she is in complete disarray.
Fifty years later, Esther, a documentary filmmaker struggling to reinvent herself, will travel back in time to those distant years when the fate of French women seems to be from another era.
lady’s hourAdele Breu
JC Lattes, Jan 2023, 324 pages