‘Nothing Holds Back the Night’ by Delphine de Vigan

‘Nothing Holds Back the Night’ by Delphine de Vigan  (2011) – 340 pages   Translated by George Miller

Imagine you were to write a book reconstructing your mother’s life.  There would be large gaps in your knowledge especially for the years before you were born, so the book would necessarily be fiction.  However you want to be as close as possible to the facts and the spirit of your mother.  You interview aunts and uncles and others who were close to her.  You necessarily must invent conversations and even scenes to give your story authenticity.  This is what French writer Delphine de Vigan has done in her novel ‘Nothing Holds Back the Night’.

I first became acquainted with the writing of de Vigan with her novel about the workplace called ‘Underground Time’.  That novel was such an intense and insightful look at office politics that I decided Delphine de Vigan is a writer to watch for any of her future novels.

“Nothing Holds Back the Night’ brings that intensity and insight to family life.  The novel makes no attempt to surprise the reader with its ending since the first few pages discuss finding her mother Lucile’s body after she committed suicide at age 61.

The book can easily be divided into two distinct parts.  The first part recreates the childhood of Lucile, and the second part deals with the adult years.

Lucile was born into a large middle-class family who lived outside of Paris.  She was the pretty one who got photographed for magazine ads; she also was the un-athletic one.

 “It grieved Liane to see her daughter (Lucile) was so unsporty: always the last to run, to jump into the water, to agree to a game of table tennis.  She was the last to get out of bed, quite simply, as though all of life were contained in the pages of books, as though it were enough to stay there, sheltered, contemplating life from a distance.”

 Although there are several childhood tragedies, one is left with the impression this was a happy family in the 1960s.  Family secrets are discussed in the novel which must have been tremendously embarrassing to other living members of the family.

The second part of the novel deals with Lucile’s adulthood when she goes off the rails.  She has two children by the age of twenty, and her marriage falls apart after six years.  During these years her daughter Delphine, our author, becomes a part of the story.

I really think that for fiction there is such a thing as being to0 close to the story.  The first half of this novel is lively and colorful as that family from the 1960s is re-imagined.  However the second half of the novel after Delphine is born is just too stark of a memoir.  I got the impression that large parts of the story had to necessarily be left out because they would be hurtful and might raise legal issues to some living people.

Basically this novel would have been much better if de Vigan had written it totally as fiction.  She certainly could have used scenes from her mother’s life in a story, but she would not have been limited by the memoir’s severe restrictions of accuracy.

As it is, I found her previous novel ‘Underground Time’ superior to ‘Nothing Holds Back the Night’.  Still the first half of this second novel is good enough so that I will be watching for her future works.