CONSTANCE DEBRÉ
Born in Paris, Constance Debré studied law at Panthéon-Assas University and worked as a criminal lawyer before leaving the profession to become an author. Her first book, Play Boy (2018) was a sensation in France and was followed by Love Me Tender (2020), published in the UK in January 2023 by Tuskar Rock Press and translated by Holly James. The novel follows an unnamed protagonist soon after she comes out and leaves her husband, beginning to lead a life of minimal requirement – sleeping, reading, swimming, and having sex – and negotiating with her ex-partner over custody of their eight-year-old son, Paul. The novel describes the slow ruination of the relationship between a mother and her son aided by the forces that ostensibly exist to protect “the family”, and builds to a complex study of the pain and power of liberty.
Interview by Nell WhittakerPortrait by Pierre-Ange Carlotti
NELL WHITTAKER The book’s epigraph – “there can be a father without the mother” – is from Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Why this line?
CONSTANCE DEBRÉ First, it was to see the story from an ancient perspective, especially the Greek one, which I love, and which is close to my approach to life. We could say that this is a contemporary story about a queer mother and a divorce, but I prefer to see it as an odyssey about someone who doesn’t want to return to her place. In that way, she’s defying the gods, which is the definition of the Greek hero. When you have trials, it’s evidence that you are a hero – that you have to go further and not bow. I also wanted to remind everyone that violence is everywhere in families, especially between mothers and fathers, but with children as well. We’re full of violence and wars. It’s not something we should complain about; it’s something we have to accept, both when we receive the blows as well as when we hand out violence. That’s what it is to be a human being. Complaining about injustice, as if it was abnormal, doesn’t make any sense to me.
NW I would say there is a lot of abnormal injustice in the novel, particularly when it comes to the systems from which the protagonist is always awaiting a verdict: the family courts, the judges.
CD It’s terribly painful, but it is something we can stand. Everyone is talking to me about freedom, but to me, freedom is not choosing this life or another, being gay or being straight. I mean, I don’t give a shit about those things. To me, real freedom is the way you respond to what happens to you. How do you react to an injustice when you can’t change it? The way the character answers that question is that she doesn’t cry, she goes further. In a certain way she feels equal to the judges – she’s condemned and she’s condemning. She’s condemning what lies under the judge’s mind. She doesn’t give a shit about having things, about having money, about having a monogamous relationship with a girl. She keeps going and she even refuses to show too much pain. She doesn’t want to talk about it; she just keeps going.
NW Something that occurred to me was that she talks about Paul similarly to the way she talks about the women that she’s sleeping with, in that she treats all of them as autonomous beings. The pain that arises from the relationship breaking down with Paul isn’t because she knows what’s best for him – she treats him like a human being who has choices. There’s a version of this story that is about a mother who will “never stop fighting for her child”. I found that there was something radical in her acceptance of things not being right, but she’s not going to override other people in order to fix it.
CD That story is too easy to tell. It would be obscene, really obscene, to write the story about this poor lesbian mother, who would be unhappy and therefore likeable. I wanted to represent someone who could make the readers uncomfortable as well. My writing is about feelings and ideas. I’m not writing to tell stories, my story. I used to be a lawyer in court, so my writing is probably closer to performative writing than that of classical novels.
NW Being a defence lawyer is about creating a story that has to be believable, right?
CD There is a story behind every case, but it’s also about the language, and your language has to be effective. It’s almost a physical experience, and it also has to be a physical experience for the judges. I want my books and sentences to have exactly the same effect on readers. I want them to be like, what’s going on? Do I agree? Do I disagree? Am I excited? Am I embarrassed? All those feelings and at the end, what do I think? Which is the exact question a judge must have at the end of a case. I’m not giving answers; I’m just shaking everything. It’s not about me, but it’s me and my story – everything is true but in a way, it’s not personal at all. That’s the whole trick about writing in the first person, as soon as you write things, it’s not personal. It was a very, very personal matter, but I use it in a very non-personal way.
NW Some writers very much designate that kind of writing as a novel, and then some are more comfortable with the line being blurry, when it comes to autofiction or similar.
CD The book I’m finishing right now, which is coming out in France in the winter, is not in the first person – so I can switch. The first person is very exciting, because of its ambiguity, but I wanted to write in this kind of performative way where you can be allowed to shake people, but if you take that risk you have to be responsible for it; you cannot hide behind the characters. If you put yourself in the book, you accept the responsibility and you take the risks. I want to catch the reader’s body, but I put my body in the book, as well.
NW Have you been surprised by some responses you’ve had?
CD I felt the need to imagine a feminine character being judged and found suspicious in her way of being a woman. That character acts a bit like a man; she’s not being a nice woman. It’s not about her having one lover, being nice lesbians together. I wanted to put, let’s say, a masculine way of behaving in that character. I mean, it’s amazing how queer people have been accepted. In cities like London, Paris, New York, it’s extremely easy and sometimes even trendy, let’s be realistic. If it’s mainstream, then a queer person can become mainstream in the way they think, and so no longer be the counterculture. They don’t really represent another way of living; they want to have a monogamous relationship, to get married, to have kids, do yoga. I want everyone to do whatever they want, but I also wanted to challenge them and also the people who believe that they are OK with queer people. Are you ready to accept a queer character if that character does not behave straight?
NW It feels like when children are involved, that’s when people shut down, like the whole conversation about kink at Pride: should children be allowed to know that gay adults have sex? That’s the problem in the novel as well: Laurent sends pictures of the protagonist’s queer friends to the family services as part of his claim the protagonist is an unsafe parent.
CD To me, there would have been no problem if the character in the book hadn’t chosen to quit law to write books. That’s the main thing: at some point, she decided that it’s OK not to have money. To the judges, it’s pure madness. Then when you add things like homosexuality, cutting her hair and getting tattoos, they cannot understand. But in a way, they are very rational. Maybe this is an expectation for a mother or even just a parent. At some point, the main character decided that it was more important to follow what she wants than to have the money even to feed her child. Maybe they are right to find that suspicious. She decides that her desire wins out; she refuses the sacrifice – and as she says, it has nothing to do with love.
NW That does feel like the radical refusal in the novel – you’re supposed to work for another person more than yourself, that what you discover through that process is the only version of self-actualisation that is broadly acceptable.
CD One of the points of the book is to say that at some point, you have to choose the other or yourself. I wrote a character who decides that, yeah, OK, I choose myself.
NW And it doesn’t necessarily make her happy all the time.
CD Absolutely. That’s the point. She chooses herself because it’s the right thing to do. She suffers, of course, but she cannot complain.
NW Do you really think she can’t complain?
CD I don’t know. I don’t see the point of complaining. I never have. To me, it’s boring and useless and unsexy. It doesn’t make good books.
NW Is it the case that once you start pulling the thread, the whole thing unravels? The job, the family, possession of stuff, the longterm loving, monogamous relationship – does the whole thing collapse entirely?
CD She wants to see if it will be “interesting to see if I am really strong or not”. There’s a taste for some kind of danger that is not too destructive but is like a test. And finally, something happens.
NW She also has a deep curiosity about people, as well, so meeting people sexually gives her the opportunity to be with different people, being open to the world and what’s there.
CD There’s something very interesting in those relationships, if I can call them relationships, where you’re suddenly very close but at the same time, very far. It’s a way not to hold people – they’re there, they want you there, they agree that you come closer, and then you come closer, and that’s it. You don’t immediately have rights on each other; you don’t own anyone. The fact that you spend a night or two together doesn’t mean that you have to text the next morning. You just came there to see. I’m very happy that you saw it that way, because you’re probably one of the first people who talks about it like that. Other people have described her sleeping with many people as a compulsive thing, but there is nothing to do with compulsion in the book. Nothing. ◉