Mylène sees herself lucidly as her husband Mallaury’s housekeeper. A simple, mundane life in which she looks after her household with great attention to detail, an extension of her conscientious work in the municipal service of the city of Saint-Étienne, when she checked houses to prevent any risk of destruction. Mylène makes sure that Mallaury lacks for nothing, especially now that her novels are successful. Accompanying her wherever she goes, she tracks down the slightest flaw, smoothes out the smallest crease. But one evening, at a writers’ dinner party, Mylène has an encounter that leads her to act strangely: she lets herself disappear. By escaping her husband for the first time, she confronts the past and breaks her silence. The writer’s wife begins to write.
With Théorie de la disparition, Séverine Chevalier unfolds the tiny epic of a woman who thinks she has nothing to say—barely to exist. A novelistic reflection on the reappropriation and recapture of the self, carried by a sensitive and striking style of writing.
