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Je suis vivant
A quatre-vingt-six ans, Eliane devait se mettre debout et faire face à son cauchemar intime. Heureusement que ses enfante étaient là, autour d'elle. Ebranlés eux aussi mais présente et attentifs. Ses enfants qui n'en étaient plus depuis longtemps. Mais Eliane restait la mère, celle qui réagissait toujours la première, celle qui avait les idées, qui trouvait les solutions. Déjà elle se colletait à ses émotions. Elle partait au combat. Suite aux chamboulements provoqués par le séisme de 2010 en Haïti, Alexandre, interné depuis de nombreuses années, ne peut plus être pris en charge par l'institution qui le garde. En deux jours, sa famille doit s'organiser pour l'accueillir. Eliane, la matriarche infatigable, réunit ses enfants et met tout son petit monde en ordre de bataille pour installer parmi eux ce fils depuis longtemps absent, quasi inconnu pour certains... Alexandre va donc réapprendre à vivre avec sa famille, et réciproquement. Sa présence va bouleverser la vie de chacun, agir comme un révélateur sur ses frères, soeurs, oncles, tantes, cousins et cousines, et faire remonter à la surface des souvenirs heureux ou amers, des émotions enfouies... Même les domestiques de cette grande famille ne seront pas épargnés par le vent nouveau qui souffle sur la maisonnée.
177 pages, Paperback
First published May 4, 2015
91 people want to read
About the author
Kettly Mars
30 books25 followersKettly Mars is a Haitian poet and novelist. She writes in French, and her books have been translated in English, Italian, Dutch, Danish, and Japanese.
Mars was born on September 3, 1958, in Port-au-Prince. She studied classical languages and worked the first twenty five years of her career as an office worker.
Since she was young she has been fascinated by poetry and around her age of thirty five years she began to write poems herself. Initially she wrote on the importance of love, the human body and sexuality in everyday life.
Her novels are situated in Haiti, although her themes are rather universal. She makes combinations between for instance gender, human race, social class, spirituality, power and violence. In 2003 her first novel appeared, called Kasalé; since then more novels followed. Her work is characterized by a vivid realistic reflection of the society.
Since about 2010 she works on an anthology on literature that was written in the 18th, 19th and 20th century by Haitian women.
(from Wikipedia)
Mars was born on September 3, 1958, in Port-au-Prince. She studied classical languages and worked the first twenty five years of her career as an office worker.
Since she was young she has been fascinated by poetry and around her age of thirty five years she began to write poems herself. Initially she wrote on the importance of love, the human body and sexuality in everyday life.
Her novels are situated in Haiti, although her themes are rather universal. She makes combinations between for instance gender, human race, social class, spirituality, power and violence. In 2003 her first novel appeared, called Kasalé; since then more novels followed. Her work is characterized by a vivid realistic reflection of the society.
Since about 2010 she works on an anthology on literature that was written in the 18th, 19th and 20th century by Haitian women.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
February 22, 2023
February 22, 2023
I Am Alive is my first favourite for 2023. It seems odd to admit I had so much fun reading a novel that tackles sombre storylines related to colonialism and imperialism, intergenerational trauma, the patriarchy, disability, queerness, and race and class in Haiti. But there aremoments of humour and the author provided an ending that gave me hope for my favourite characters.
Haiti is the world in Kettly Mars' novel, translated from the original French into English by Nathan H. Dize. Haiti. Most of the story is set in Fleur-de-Chêne, the bourgeois Bernier family's courtyard in Port-au-Prince. Global, hemispheric, national, communal, and individual histories converge there.
The novel opens not within but outside its confines during the 2010 earthquake. Alexandre Bernier is the elderly son diagnosed with schizophrenia his parents banished to a mental health insitute 40+ years ago after a confrontation between Alexandre and his mother Éliane escalated into violence. A nurse at the Insitute assures Grégoire, his younger brother, that the building and its occupants are well, with mininum damage. No need for concern. But Grégoire remains unsettled, sensing what is to come almost a year later after the UN cholera outbreak. Alexandre must return home. How will this affect the reunited family after near and not distant enough histories have permanently severed so many others?
What follows is 125 pages of polyvocalized interiorities that support and belie that simple summary. There was much more to Alexandre's behaviour than a chemical imbalance and many other factors that influenced the decision to have him committed than the single attack. We get to think through it all with the rest of the well-off family that includes his youngrt brother, an accountant who cannot fulfill his patriarchal duty and bear a son; the "fragile" eldest, a successful painter who journeys back to her queer self in the same space that imposed the restraints; the youngest sister, a small business owner who sees and remembers more than everyone would like to admit; and an elderly mother whose memory of the Duvalier years is often clearer to her than the present.
Others include their spouses and domestic staff like the housekeeper whose husband died of complications related to AIDS, and a model who lives with her family in a house still covered by tarpaulin a year out from the earthquake. Mars' stated "attempt to break a silence" was no easy goal. The intricate interweavings, intra and inter household alliances, complemetary and contradictory stories were the gripping, complex testimony to the monumental task she set herself.
I can only be grateful that Dize stuck as close as possible to the original novel's form deciding against a family tree or character names above the different "chapters". Those decisions welcome an involved reader who will be pulled into the courtyard to be as immersed, as curious and, eventually, as opinionated as any of the novel's characters.
Yuh know that deep sense of satisfaction when you recognise that you're reading a damn good book? Written with such skill yuh wah smack your lips? That's I Am Alive.
*****
February 7, 2023
4.5 ⭐. New book for me to rave about for the whole year because DAMN Mars did that and reached us through Dize's amazing translation. I'm still reeling because I didn't expect it to leave me where it did in light of where it started.
I Am Alive is my first favourite for 2023. It seems odd to admit I had so much fun reading a novel that tackles sombre storylines related to colonialism and imperialism, intergenerational trauma, the patriarchy, disability, queerness, and race and class in Haiti. But there aremoments of humour and the author provided an ending that gave me hope for my favourite characters.
Haiti is the world in Kettly Mars' novel, translated from the original French into English by Nathan H. Dize. Haiti. Most of the story is set in Fleur-de-Chêne, the bourgeois Bernier family's courtyard in Port-au-Prince. Global, hemispheric, national, communal, and individual histories converge there.
The novel opens not within but outside its confines during the 2010 earthquake. Alexandre Bernier is the elderly son diagnosed with schizophrenia his parents banished to a mental health insitute 40+ years ago after a confrontation between Alexandre and his mother Éliane escalated into violence. A nurse at the Insitute assures Grégoire, his younger brother, that the building and its occupants are well, with mininum damage. No need for concern. But Grégoire remains unsettled, sensing what is to come almost a year later after the UN cholera outbreak. Alexandre must return home. How will this affect the reunited family after near and not distant enough histories have permanently severed so many others?
What follows is 125 pages of polyvocalized interiorities that support and belie that simple summary. There was much more to Alexandre's behaviour than a chemical imbalance and many other factors that influenced the decision to have him committed than the single attack. We get to think through it all with the rest of the well-off family that includes his youngrt brother, an accountant who cannot fulfill his patriarchal duty and bear a son; the "fragile" eldest, a successful painter who journeys back to her queer self in the same space that imposed the restraints; the youngest sister, a small business owner who sees and remembers more than everyone would like to admit; and an elderly mother whose memory of the Duvalier years is often clearer to her than the present.
Others include their spouses and domestic staff like the housekeeper whose husband died of complications related to AIDS, and a model who lives with her family in a house still covered by tarpaulin a year out from the earthquake. Mars' stated "attempt to break a silence" was no easy goal. The intricate interweavings, intra and inter household alliances, complemetary and contradictory stories were the gripping, complex testimony to the monumental task she set herself.
I can only be grateful that Dize stuck as close as possible to the original novel's form deciding against a family tree or character names above the different "chapters". Those decisions welcome an involved reader who will be pulled into the courtyard to be as immersed, as curious and, eventually, as opinionated as any of the novel's characters.
Yuh know that deep sense of satisfaction when you recognise that you're reading a damn good book? Written with such skill yuh wah smack your lips? That's I Am Alive.
*****
February 7, 2023
4.5 ⭐. New book for me to rave about for the whole year because DAMN Mars did that and reached us through Dize's amazing translation. I'm still reeling because I didn't expect it to leave me where it did in light of where it started.
January 12, 2024
i loved this book so much. it was written so beautifully, and Mars does an exceptional job of trusting the reader to discern the speakers and the message of each chapter.
April 22, 2023
I got to meet the translator of this book and it gave me a whole new perspective on maintaining the integrity of stories and voices (which is something also very important to Mars). This book was so fascinating and enthralling. It felt like a puzzle solving who’s POV each chapter was. I also liked that it didn’t feel the need to over explain things. What was said was all that was needed—it was more about the feelings.
November 10, 2024
This is a little novel that could. In 126 pages, it tackles mental illness, survivor’s guilt, shame, class dynamics, and human sexuality. The reader is introduced to a complex family, who are largely insulated from the worst effects of Haiti’s 12 Janvier earthquake crisis.
First published in French in 2015, and translated into English by Nathan Dize in 2022, the story is built around the homecoming of a family's eldest son and brother, Alexandre. Diagnosed with schizophrenia since his teen years, Alexandre had been confined to a mental health care home for 40 years. The family is forced to take him home because the foundation of the care home has been undermined by the earthquake, and the cholera crisis has broken out. Alexandre's homecoming provokes a reckoning which the family, having avoided it for 40 years, feels unprepared to confront.
But this is more than a story about mental illness. It is also largely a story about family and community. In this tiny volume, Kettly Mars, almost surreptitiously and with considerable sensitivity, integrates provocative reflections on matters we as parents, siblings, and community members would rather avoid. The concerns of this novel are so large and impactful that I will have to revisit it from time to time to properly consider all it offers.
First published in French in 2015, and translated into English by Nathan Dize in 2022, the story is built around the homecoming of a family's eldest son and brother, Alexandre. Diagnosed with schizophrenia since his teen years, Alexandre had been confined to a mental health care home for 40 years. The family is forced to take him home because the foundation of the care home has been undermined by the earthquake, and the cholera crisis has broken out. Alexandre's homecoming provokes a reckoning which the family, having avoided it for 40 years, feels unprepared to confront.
But this is more than a story about mental illness. It is also largely a story about family and community. In this tiny volume, Kettly Mars, almost surreptitiously and with considerable sensitivity, integrates provocative reflections on matters we as parents, siblings, and community members would rather avoid. The concerns of this novel are so large and impactful that I will have to revisit it from time to time to properly consider all it offers.
Read
June 19, 2023"You could write loads of novels only using the silences within relationships."
.
I loved this book so much ✨ Completely in awe of both Kettly Mars' craft & Nathan H. Dize's thoughtful approach at the translation.
I picked up I AM ALIVE because the plot called to me - and the story certainly lived up to my expectations - but what ended up enthralling me the most was the style and structure of the narration.
Like many before me have said, this book requires you to actively engage the whole way through, since the POV changes every few pages between a dozen or so characters without ever labeling who is doing the speaking. Kettly trusts the reader to figure it out through context (and we do!), which makes the book a truly immersive experience.
I usually point to Daniel Nayeri's first middle grade as an example of creative stylistic choices - now I am happy to have an adult example too. We (as writers) can learn a lot from Mars' brilliance. 📝
.
I loved this book so much ✨ Completely in awe of both Kettly Mars' craft & Nathan H. Dize's thoughtful approach at the translation.
I picked up I AM ALIVE because the plot called to me - and the story certainly lived up to my expectations - but what ended up enthralling me the most was the style and structure of the narration.
Like many before me have said, this book requires you to actively engage the whole way through, since the POV changes every few pages between a dozen or so characters without ever labeling who is doing the speaking. Kettly trusts the reader to figure it out through context (and we do!), which makes the book a truly immersive experience.
I usually point to Daniel Nayeri's first middle grade as an example of creative stylistic choices - now I am happy to have an adult example too. We (as writers) can learn a lot from Mars' brilliance. 📝
Read
June 15, 2025The Haitian earthquake of 2010 sends a schizophrenic back to his bourgeoisie creole family for the first time in thirty years, upends and inspiring the household. Unfolding in polyphonic confessional, Mars paints an honest but hopeful portrait of mental illness and its secondhand effects, one painfully recognizable apart from any distinction in language, race or culture. Mars is a writer of rare talent, I've been impressed with this and the also excellent Savage Seasons.
June 6, 2017
I really enjoyed the characters, but I felt like I spent the whole book waiting for something that never happened. I could definitely see a play or movie being made with these characters as the starting point.
December 13, 2023
to what extent is the responsibility of the burden of mental illness the family's? to what extent can actions be excused or justified by mental illness? please write your response in no less than 500 words.
December 27, 2023
A very readable novel, with short chapters coming from multiple viewpoints. We seem to inhabit the "thought scape" of everyone on a small compound in Haiti housing an extended family. The story of closure and redemption is uplifting, but never cloying.
Read
March 30, 2021J'en fus confuse.
Se souvenir de, tous ces gens..
Il s'agit d'un beau récit
Se souvenir de, tous ces gens..
Il s'agit d'un beau récit
April 16, 2024
Très beau livre 📕
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews