Description
Fugitive and Queen
Book Summary
Violaine Huisman constructs an intimate and devastating portrait of her mother, Catherine Cremnitz, an overwhelming and contradictory figure who oscillates between royalty and flight. A Parisian, manic-depressive, lame dancer, and libertine wife, Catherine was above all a "motherquake" who ravaged her two daughters with her ferocity. Set in the elegant Paris of the eighties and nineties, this novel is a posthumous tribute that explores love, illness, and guilt with a mixture of rawness, beauty, and dark humor.
What is it about?
The work delves into the life of Catherine Cremnitz, a woman who defies all labels. From her youth as a dancer despite a limp, to her marriage to an even more dissolute man, her existence is a whirlwind of passion, excess, and a constant struggle against her own demons. The narrator, her daughter Violaine, unravels her mother's complexity: her fierce love for her daughters, her battle against mental illness and childhood trauma, and her repeated attempts to straighten out a life marked by instability. The story not only traces Catherine's life, but also addresses the profound guilt of the daughter who could not keep her alive, turning the narrative into a literary exorcism and a heartbreaking act of love.
Main Themes
- Extreme and contradictory maternal love, capable of both protecting and destroying at the same time.
- Mental illness (manic-depressive disorder) and its impact on identity and family relationships.
- Memory and grief as tools to reconstruct and understand a complex maternal figure.
- The liberation from and the burden of family heritage, marked by trauma and secrets.
- The search for identity through writing and posthumous homage.
Who is it recommended for?
This book is aimed at readers interested in autobiographical narrative and life writing, especially those who seek stories that address the complexity of family ties, non-idealized motherhood, and the fight against adversity. It is also recommended for those who appreciate raw, poetic prose sprinkled with dark humor, as well as for lovers of novels that explore Paris at the end of the 20th century as the setting for an intense and overflowing life.
What this book offers
- An honest and uncompromising perspective on the mother-daughter relationship, far from sentimental clichés.
- An immersion into the experience of growing up alongside a person with bipolar disorder, seen through the eyes of a daughter.
- A reflection on the power of writing as a tool to process pain, guilt, and memory.
- A vivid portrait of an exceptional woman, whose life is a testament to both resilience and fragility.
Technical Specifications
- Author: Huisman, Violaine
- Publisher: Hoja de Lata Editorial
- Language: Spanish
- Subject: MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY FICTION, TRAVEL LITERATURE
- Collection: SENSIBLES A LAS LETRAS
- Binding: Paperback
- Publication Date: February 2019
- Number of pages: 240
- Weight: 360 g
Editorial Review
Fugitive and Queen is a work that stands out for its emotional honesty and its ability to portray the complexity of a maternal figure without falling into idealization or easy judgment. The author achieves a balance between the rawness of the events and the beauty of a prose that, despite the hardness of the subject, maintains a lyrical and often humorous tone. It is a book that will appeal to those who seek readings that explore family bonds from an intimate, courageous, and deeply human perspective.