OF HER OWN FREE WILL

Mathilde Forget,

(Grasset, 140 pages, 2021)

***TRANSLATION SAMPLE AVAILABLE HERE***

Early one Sunday morning, a young woman turns herself in at the local police station. What crime has she committed? Why, with her breath reeking of rum and Coke, is she sitting across from the chief inspector as he asks her to “start again from the beginning”? But when did it all really begin? Her apartment is searched and her possessions sealed. Everything is either held as evidence or disregarded altogether. They are searching for the truth, and she has no choice but to join them.

The cogs of the investigation are in motion: Her fingerprints are taken, she is psychologically assessed, a lawyer is already preparing her defense, and her friends and ex-lover are being interrogated. Ready to face justice, the juvenile- and androgynous-looking woman obediently follows the directives of the officers in charge. They seem to anticipate her physical needs even though they do not look her in the eye when they speak. She begins to notice how the chief inspector never repeats exactly what she says; he modifies her responses ever so slightly. How disconcerting that he already seems to know her answers.

Details of the young woman’s life slowly surface during the interrogation: her job as a museum attendant, her nightlife (clubs, alcohol, drugs), childhood memories of long-repressed sexual preferences that her current lifestyle seems now to make up for. Another story begins to emerge, steadily displacing the script that the police are busy writing. Is she, in the end, the perpetrator or the victim?

Originally constructed, this powerful short novel turns from a detective tale into a memoir of a survivor, laying bare the suspicion that often hangs over a victim of sexual assault. Finely attuned to the young narrator’s acute bodily awareness and inner monologue, Of Her Own Free Will speaks to the current reckoning initiated by the #MeToo movement, offering an incisive reflection on how early experiences of guilt and shame continue to haunt one’s sense of self. There is nothing predictable in the way Mathilde Forget brilliantly illuminates the slipperiness of words, the ambiguity of situations, and the critical craft of storytelling in the pursuit of the truth.

Mathilde Forget is a French author, songwriter, and performer. À la demande d’un tiers, her debut novel (Grasset, 2019), was selected for the 2019 Prix du roman Fnac.