The Memory of the Air by Caroline Lamarche (tr. Katherine Gregor)
Review by Rachel Farmer
The Memory of the Air, Caroline Lamarche’s slim memoir, translated by Katherine Gregor, about the violences—physical, sexual and psychological—that women experience at the hands of men.
"The sadness of men is a disease I catch easily, I'm not made of marble, or rubber, or soap, or cloud, their discouragement doesn't wash over me, it penetrates me, my skin is a sponge. Let me say at this stage that some people use me as a sounding board, as though I had no inner life whatsoever. They get upset at even the slightest reaction on my part, be it encouragement, advice or nervousness. They would rather I kept still and silent, like a dead woman smiling."
The book probes into a fraught relationship between Lamarche and Manfore (a contracted version of “man-before”, the name she gives this anonymous man), which often descends into gaslighting and manipulation, even physical violence. He uses the sexual violence she has experienced in the past against her, employing the devious narrative shift so often used against women trying to navigate their own victimhood and agency. The flowing and natural prose, which is nonetheless taut and precise, describes the gender dynamics at play with nuance and flare. The author also describes her assault itself, dwelling on the unexpected and complex emotions she experienced during and after, as well as her overwhelming feeling of pity for her attacker and her subsequent unpleasant encounter with police.
In the opening pages, Lamarche describes a dream she had in which she descended to the bottom of a ravine and found a dead woman lying there. This idea of depths and chasms is threaded throughout the text: she imagines there is an icy crevasse inside her that cannot be reached by sunlight; she is fascinated also by the history of coal miners who descended into the depths of the earth; and later on when she goes to hospital to have an injury checked out by the A&E department, she is sent into the depths of the windowless basement. Over time, Lamarche gradually discovers who that dead woman in the ravine might be, this metaphor allowing her to examine from an outside perspective the impact of her experiences.
Like the best memoirists, Lamarche has a knack for self-interrogation that cuts to the quick, while always providing a counterweight of self-compassion. With rare aplomb, she has managed to distil a sweeping topic that is heavy with nuance and complexity into a few short pages, which nonetheless capture an essential part of the conversation about violence against women and deliver a caustic indictment of the power imbalance between the genders. In her introduction to this edition, Dr Dominique Carlini-Versini astutely draws the link between this book and the #MeToo movement, highlighting the dynamic shift in public discourse in the space of a few short years. As she points out, the original book was released in 2014, before the movement took off, while the English translation is being published five years after it. So much has already been said, yet, as Lamarche’s book makes clear, there is so much still to say.
This novella, a well-deserved winner of a PEN Translates award, is essential reading for anyone interested in women’s experiences and in overcoming women’s oppression—though perhaps those less interested in its premise are the ones who most urgently need to read it.
The Memory of the Air is published by Héloïse Press, 26th September 2022