Former international model-turned-bestselling author Dominique Bertrand delves squarely into the themes of violence, injustice and revenge in a new novel that strips naked. Secret gardens full of nettles. Three compatriots brought together by circumstances decide to take matters into their own hands and use the funds to settle their accounts. The wild book caught the eye: the television adaptation rights were acquired before its release.
Clara, a beautiful, rich and glamorous woman, stands on the brink of the abyss. Thank God she ran aground, a run-down truck stop on the edge of the “Parc de La Vérandrye”. There she meets Richard, a truck driver who has also been skinned alive.
In a shabby room, these two beings who weren’t meant to meet get to know each other. What’s more, by speaking, by surrendering without a filter, they are reborn from their ashes. With the means at their disposal, like people who have nothing left to lose, they decide to settle their accounts with their lives without any scruples. Protector, they take the young waitress at the thank god, Symone, pregnant, under their wing.
With courage, tenderness, openness of mind and heart, Clara, Richard and Symone will support each other, learn to laugh again and maybe even love each other.
Dominique Bertrand, shocked by the many instances of violence, abuse and injustice, decided to write about these difficult subjects. She says it herself: the book “Sleeves in the dashboard”.
Writing it was quite an experience. “There are passages that were so difficult to write, emotional… Luckily I have a shrink, I can tell you that,” she reveals.
“It touches on subjects that are very intriguing and very intriguing to most normally constituted people. And my characters really needed to be steeped in that. I had to find the right words to get them to talk about what they are going through.
The author carried the emotional charge of her characters on her shoulders.
Photo provided by Editions Flammarion Québec
“I’m a very, very sensitive girl and my characters, what I let them live, I live at the same time.”
When she writes, Dominique Bertrand explains that she doesn’t necessarily write about something that has happened to her or what loved ones have experienced, but that we always assume a sensitivity that we have, for example socially, to certain issues.
“We take that sensibility and focus it on one character. All of these characters have become real people to me,” she says.
She agrees: It’s a tough book.
“But the most sensitive and desperate characters end up being the strongest. It’s a book that also talks about resilience… and “we’re tired of being fooled… and we’re going to take care of it ourselves,” she says, specifying that “it’s fiction.”
An inner strength
Dominique Bertrand wanted to write about despair, life’s deepest disappointments, disorientation and the fact of getting up again, of being reborn.
“I wanted to talk about it because people who are going through it often feel like they’re the only ones going through it when most people have gone through a period in their lives where they’ve lost their bearings. They lost what they loved most. They have the impression that they will never find the will to live again and will never touch happiness again. But yes, we can be reborn from our ashes.
“I can say that for now. I experienced extremely severe grief and was able to rise from my ashes. I’m not saying it was easy. But I had a resilience within me that allowed me to do that. A strength I had that I didn’t even suspect.
- A former international model, Dominique Bertrand became a television and radio host, then an author.
- Her autobiography Démaquillée quickly rose to the top of the bestseller charts.
- She then published Le Pot au rose and Le coeur gros.
- Zone 3 has acquired the television rights to his new book.
- She will be a grandmother for the first time this year.
EXTRACT
“First I filled up, then I went to the checkout, to the filthy little snack bar next to it, thank God. A neon-lit boui-boui with torn faux leather banquettes, decrepit blinds, and Formica counters riddled with cigarette burns, chipped in places. The big chic thing.
The walls showed signs of mold here and there and splashes of sauce, red wine or blood, difficult to see. I thought about taking the road back to Montreal, but pulled myself together. I paid for my gallons of gas from the waitress, a pretty deer-faced brunette, a sort of Audrey Hepburn who struck me as miserable as the stones with her round pregnant belly and the bluish circles under her eyes, then took the opportunity to book a room for to ask the night.”