It is an already unique voice, by its accuracy, its assurance, that gives to hear this first book, where also resound those of Virginia Woolf and Alice Munro. With The Blood of The Stones, Lucille Ryckebusch tells the simple and terrible story of an ordeal and a consolation.
Jeanne reconnects with a former lover when she falls seriously ill. He is tormented, secretive, no longer loves her; she is weakened and has no one else. The Blood of The Stones is the uncompromising account of her dispossession of herself, a story that she tells to this man after she has come close to death. Jeanne begins to lose blood after her lover has left her in the middle of winter. She is so vulnerable that she asks this tormented man to come back into her life; he accompanies her to the hospital, helps her take care of her children. She has no one else. For six weeks, which pass like a nightmare, there is a succession of haemorrhages and medical interventions. Jeanne’s dehumanization in the department of obstetrics and gynecology is compounded by the psychological abuse of her former lover. This very short novel, dazzling and limpid, is the letter that she sends him to reconstruct her story, with an almost documentary rigour, and to reappropriate her body forever transformed.
