Entre s'en foutre et en crever

Stéphane isn’t doing well. Ever since an old man has been sitting on her every night, she hasn’t been able to sleep. Yet, as a doctor at La Palmeraie, Stéphane has no choice: every morning, she has to go to work, treat patients, and take care of them. So Stéphane smokes, drinks coffee, and talks to Françoise Sagan, whom she passes every morning on her way to the hospital. Or maybe it’s her park (that she passes through).
Stéphane isn’t quite sure anymore. Who’s not doing well? Her or everyone else? And who should she believe? Mamé, 93, who gives birth at La Palmeraie to a stillborn baby named Mike, or Joséphine, her super-hot, obese granddaughter, who’s being operated on by Daronne, who’s determined to fit her with a gastric band “for her own good”? Operating, dissecting, cutting open, slicing through the fat might well be pointless when the ghosts of the past come to haunt the nights and a mysterious bluish-black man appears at the door—who might well be the ghost of another child, “collateral damage” from a conflict that refuses to fade. Here, Claire Barrabès explores the transmission of trauma and epigenetics. She also draws on her previous research into rape as a weapon of war.