Violet d’Urso. “I looked for my father everywhere.”

We could read Violet d’Urso’s first book, Even the noise of the night has changed as a tribute to his father (Italian businessman Luigi d’Urso), who died too soon, while at the same time shedding light, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, on his connections with his mother, Ines de la Fressange, the epitome of Parisian luxury. , the country of his heart, Italy, and the family he created there, following in the footsteps of a versatile man. But it is also, and above all, an instructive novel by a sensitive pen, in which uncovering secrets (her much-loved father was a drug addict, and the heart attack that cost him his life was due to the exhaustion of her body: heroin) allows a young girl who is looking for her origin, get rid of the past. Interview:

In the video, after the sunthe teaser

Why did I write this novel?

“I wanted to write this book when my father died when I was 6 years old. Everything could not end like this. I had to tell his story. Yesterday I also found a sheet dated August 25, 2008, on which I had drawn a book cover titled: I don’t live without writing), but there I wanted to write a novel, and this desire combined with the research I was doing to learn more about my father. If I had known everything about him, this book would never have seen the light of day, and I imagined, invented, embroidered a lot to fill in the gaps. I am an orphan and it helped me to meet people who have experienced what I have experienced, but my text responds less to my need to write about my life or personal situation than to my desire to write about orphans and not just children. on drug addicts or parents who never left those who were small (shiny and perfect) imagined to be simple people.

My father, this hero

“As I progressed in my research, I realized that my father would probably be the best person to understand me, because he also lost his mother very early, at the age of 9. He compensated for this lack with drugs, I went to look for words. Wrote the book I wish I could find. And writing, I got answers… My father was an incredible man, a character in a novel like no other. Original, cultured, funny, taking everything with humor, both Neapolitan and English, able to maintain many friendships, but also to spend weeks, months in isolation, studying only things that interest him. Someone who seemed lost in the world of the party, and who was sensitive and enlightened at the same time… I think he would have been proud of his daughter writing, and her writing about him. He would be very proud of that.”

It also made me grieve a second time for the person I thought he was.

Violet d’Urso

The burden of privacy

“In my family, we saved ourselves from what happened by making a good story out of it. And that’s good. without it, my sisters and I might not have become the balanced and happy people we are. But when I realized that everything I believed had little to do with the truth, I realized that my grief was not over, perhaps because secrecy prevents wounds from healing, sometimes for generations. It’s like we carried the secret, even though we didn’t know it existed… It kept me going, but discovering all these new faces of my father also somehow made me mourn a second time, the man. thought it was him.”

Trips to Italy

“In Italy, I looked everywhere for my father, with few elements. sometimes I only had city names. Here’s why Even the noise of the night has changed has so many descriptions of Italian cities. If I also decided to start with my father’s story, it was because it was very romantic and allowed me to collect elements that interested me, like this atmosphere. Cheetah Southern aristocracy, swinging world, elegance that no longer has a place and still persists. My father was one of the last representatives of this world. I think of Palermo, for example, “the only city where beggars can live in palaces”, I was told one day by families who only partially live in those palaces, because everything else is falling into ruins… I have done all these cities : single as in Travel in Italy Stendhal, having a sense of falling into another century, diving into the past, which paradoxically allowed me to grow.”

The book is about my father, but my mother is not absent

Violet d’Urso

Family picture

“Even the noise of the night changed, can be read as a family portrait in a broad sense, with a close-knit family that has experienced tragedy and the Italian family Anna has built. Of course, I took a lot of liberties with my family. I have three sisters, not two, and while Rosalie’s character includes traits from my sisters, Molly’s character is completely fictional. The book is about my father, but my mother is not absent. I didn’t want the novel to focus on the character of the mother, but she is there at the decisive moments. At first, of course, because it reminds me of a child’s life, but then also. he is the one who allows the book to be made, because he allows the narrator to go to Italy alone. I find that she is in her right place, guiding her daughter from afar with great grace.

Me and my mother

“My mother and I didn’t talk much about the portrait of my mother in the book. Unlike other people around me, he didn’t look inside himself, he didn’t try to decide what was inspired by him or not. He always encouraged me to write, he knew what my dream was, while being aware of the difficulties. It is a very lonely, hard process, almost against the tide of life. When they asked me: “What are you doing right now?” And I answered: “I am writing”: It was always followed by: “Yes, but what do you do?”… I spent a lot of time on this text and I spent a lot of time finding a publisher who understood me and understood my literary project.

Alix Pennent of Flammarion thus helped me enormously in the construction of the text, to drive each chapter forward when I was prone to reflections and digressions, and I think my mother is proud that I did not give in to the text. easy way I worked and reworked my book until I was satisfied with it. I recently found a video of him forcing me to draw and where I declare: “There, mom, I’m done!” And when I was 4 years old, he answered: “No, but you can develop that motif, add here…” He always pushed me to go further. He is a very inspiring, sensitive, funny, intelligent person and there would be a lot to say and write about him. But we all know who she is and I don’t want to be reduced to ‘daughter’. Also, it is in order not to bring him back all the time that I write, and my sister Nina is engaged in theater.

In the video: three delirious minutes with Ines de la Fresange