Live Reading of La femme qui fuit

To bring this book to the stage, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette asked her friend, actress Catherine de Léan, to read excerpts, with Brigitte Haentjens as stage director. This book has captivated all of its readers since it was published, and even won the 2016 Prix des libraires du Québec.

Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother’s mother. She knew very little about the woman’s life, except that her name was Suzanne and that in 1948, she joined Borduas, Gauvreau, and Riopelle in signing the Refus global. With Barbeau, she started a family, but soon abandoned her two children—forever.

The author hired a private detective to uncover the life of this outraged and outrageous woman. Discoveries big and small were quick to come. She grew up with her feet in the mud, fought with the English kids, fell in love with a Catholic spiritual director, ran away to Montréal, got caught up in the artistic frenzy of the Automatistes, had wild romances in Europe, fought in the Black movements of angry America; she was a dandelion puller in Ontario, a mail clerk in Gaspésie, a painter, a poet, a lover, a devouring entity… and a ghost.

La femme qui fuit is the life story of an explosive woman, a volcano, a free spirit on the fringes of history who walked a tightrope through the 20th century and its storms. For her granddaughter Anaïs, it’s also a raw, direct letter to the woman who wounded her mother forever.

Credits

Reader: Catherine de Léan
Music: Bernard Falaise
Stage director: Brigitte Haentjens
Text: La femme qui fuit by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette (Marchand de feuilles, 2015)
Production: Festival international de la littérature (FIL)