Is this really sensible? Drinking tomato juice on board a plane after the crash of the Rio-Paris flight is fine. Going to the Amazon in search of an Indian you’ve seen on TV one night, surely not. But Jeanne Beaulieu will travel in a strange way, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques in one hand, unfinished love stories in the other. Taking to the road, crossing forests, listening to the melodies of birds, going up the Amazon or the Guadalquivir, crossing paths with Frida Kahlo and Don Quixote. Where are we when we’re somewhere? Jeanne Beaulieu tells herself stories that lead her to her desires and ghosts, to that Indian who eludes her, to the very real eyes and hands of a man she’ll never forget.
Jeanne is no fool. There’s no such thing as exotic travel. In Brazil or anywhere else, venturing out in search of oneself rekindles childhood pain, gives rise to unheard-of desires and sets up mirrors in front of oneself. Jeanne is the paradoxical heroine of an adventure novel, who would like to see the face of a free woman reflected on the calm water.
