A poignant first novel that explores the disappearance and absence of a loved one.
Faced with a colleague in a bar who asks her simply: “By the way, what did your father die of?”, Céline Bagault, the author and narrator of this story, is overcome with dread. She finds it impossible to answer this seemingly banal question. When and how her father died, she doesn’t know. Suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the man fled the nursing home where he was staying and disappeared without a trace. His family searched for him for years. Céline and her partner did not hesitate to organise their lives around this search. They set out on a treasure hunt to find their father. But when all else failed, the family had to resign themselves to holding a farewell ceremony in church for a man without a body.
And then, one day, a call from a policeman could put an end to all possible fantasies; Céline has to come and identify the objects found on a man’s body…
Céline Bagault explores the anxiety-inducing period in which a disappearance plunges us by giving us the portrait of her father, and she questions how the infinite wait for a loved one occupies the entire space of those close to him.
