The Land of the Kangaroo

 

 

 

 

 

 

This morning, I found daddy in the washing machine. As I entered the kitchen I noticed the plastic bag on the floor and the dishes from the day before. I opened up the washing machine, Daddy was in there. He looked at me the same way the dog looks at me when he pees on the stairs of the building. My dad was stuck in there. And I have no idea how he managed to get in it : My Daddy is big.

 

 

9 year-old Simon lives with his daddy Paul and his mother Carol in a big appartment in Trocadéro, Paris. But the couple has been separated for a long time. Paul is a writer, he writes for other people. Carole, successful businesswomen, lives in Australia, far from her husband she no longer admires and from her boy she does not know how to love.

 

The day when Paul is interned for depression, the motherless child is taken away by the burlesque grandma, adept of spiritism sessions with her « witches » friends, and yet she will do anything to protect her grandson.

 

In the hallways of the hospital, Simon also meets the evanescent Lily, a purple-eyed autist child who seems resolute to offer him her help.

Moved by Lily’s love, lost in a world he does not understand, Simon will try, through the dreams he comes up with when he closes his eyes, to understand his dad’s disease, until he will discover the unspeakable truth.

 

 

Gilles Paris has published two novels : Papa et maman sont morts (Mom And Dad Are Dead) (Le Seuil, 1991) and Autobiographie d’une courgette (Autobiography Of A Zucchini) (Plon, 2002). He works in the book edition’s domain.