Actress and director Carole Laure published her very first novel, a fictional autobiography entitled I never go too far from home.
In these pages the author, of a rather reserved nature, takes the reader back to her childhood in Shawinigan, to her very loving adoptive parents, Blanche and George, who already had six more children, all young men at the time of her arrival, and most of whom had left the nest. She also talks about her sister-mother Marie, who took care of her like her own daughter.
Recalling memories of another era, lulled by imagination, the heroine, trying to understand her origins, grows up before the reader's eyes. She shares her desire for freedom, adventure and search for identity, which improves over the years, as well as her emotional connections with the maternal figures around her.
“Orphan. I don’t like this word, saturated with pity. No, I don’t want this word to define me. Because I am free, free to face my future. And I see for myself a future filled with love, free from sadness,” she writes in her novel.
“I am not a black man, I am someone who has had adversity but overcame it. […] I preferred to look at life quite poetically and quite romantically,” Carol Lohr commented in an interview with QMI at the time, calling herself a great romantic who never stopped feeding her imagination, thanks in part to the stories her father told her.
“My adoptive father told me stories all the time. He made up stories about where I was from. I arrived by parachute or down the river in a canoe. When you grow up on the edge of the forest, in nature, near the river, it gives you a taste for storytelling,” she added, pointing out that she does the same today with her grandchildren.
PHOTO BY CARL LESSARD COURTESY OF VLB EDITOR
Tender despite the themes explored, and well written, this first novel recalls the author's personal life as a child marked by the loss of her biological mother, who died at her birth, and the absence of her biological father, while simultaneously expressing her love for her adopted family.
“I also describe how I felt, how I saw this family that I loved, and how sad I was not knowing my real parents, especially my mother,” she continued, insisting that the fictional aspect of this biography was “completely fictional.”
“There are dreams and there is reality. I think that in life dreams are the same part of reality. […] We reinvent memories, reframe them, then leave aside what makes us suffer too much and embellish what was less. “That’s the thinking behind my book,” she added, preferring to keep to herself what is real and what is embellished.
The actress, who has also written and directed four films in recent years, told QMI that she enjoys her writing experience. She is currently working on writing a second novel, which this time has nothing to do with her.
She would also like to one day publish some of her stories, which her grandchildren love.
