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La vie, après
" J'ai attendu de nous savoir solides pour reprendre la plume. J'ai alors tenté de consigner les mues, cette écume du changement, depuis la perte de tous les repères jusqu' à cet instant où le ciel se dégage, presque d'un coup. C'est là que vient la vie, après. "
Antoine Leiris a perdu sa femme le 13 novembre 2015 au Bataclan. Vous n'aurez pas ma haine, son précédent livre, racontait les jours d'après, pour lui et son fils Melvil. Quatre ans plus tard, tous deux ont changé et grandi. Antoine Leiris n'est plus le même homme, ni le même père ; Melvil est devenu un petit garçon. C'est ce voyage que raconte La Vie, après. Celui d'un homme et de son fils qui ont poursuivi, malgré tout, leur chemin vers la vie. Un récit affectif et lumineux, qui dit combien l' écriture est source et témoin du vivant.
- GenresNonfiction
171 pages, Paperback
Published October 17, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
October 21, 2021
Mentre Vous n'aurez pas ma haine analizza il dramma del lutto a caldo, a pochi giorni dall'attentato al Bataclan, La vie Après lo affronta a freddo, dal punto di vista di un giovane padre vedovo, che ogni giorno si trova a far fronte alle mille difficoltà e responsabilità legate al suo ruolo. Antonie Leiris svolge con eleganza e delicatezza questo arduo compito, lasciandosi andare alle emozioni con innocenza e sincerità. Per quanto emotivamente intensa, La Vie Après è una lettura piacevole, scorrevole e che lascia spazio a molteplici riflessioni sulla vita, la morte, il lutto e i valori della famiglia.
December 13, 2020
Cet évitement , cette tendance irrémédiable à vouloir sortir du cadre, cette idée que si je ne fais pas de bruit, personne ne verra que je ne suis plus dans l’image.
October 25, 2019
Une ode à la paternité, à l'enfance, aux parents raconté d'une écriture intense, belle et poétique.
A lire, à partager.
A lire, à partager.
July 14, 2025
"Life, After" by Antoine Leiris
The book over single parent raising his toddler alone after losing his wife in terrorist attack. The life, after his wife's death.
Majorly this book bored, because I have not any literal interest in such topics. Despite of this I liked how he had put his struggles and snuggle in a page.
He always had a fear of not being a best parent, and giving his best in his exams, trying to get 10/10. Decisions he had to make, never being sure, were the right ones...
The presence of Hélène despite everything, with him, with them, a little bit everywhere. After such boring content, there remains sweetness and melancholy.
I hate the way he was overlooked after his son, not giving him bit of space to fall down and getting up on his own.
The book over single parent raising his toddler alone after losing his wife in terrorist attack. The life, after his wife's death.
Majorly this book bored, because I have not any literal interest in such topics. Despite of this I liked how he had put his struggles and snuggle in a page.
He always had a fear of not being a best parent, and giving his best in his exams, trying to get 10/10. Decisions he had to make, never being sure, were the right ones...
The presence of Hélène despite everything, with him, with them, a little bit everywhere. After such boring content, there remains sweetness and melancholy.
I hate the way he was overlooked after his son, not giving him bit of space to fall down and getting up on his own.
November 4, 2022
'Les sourires discret sont les plus précieux, ils sont comme les baisers légers, les mains sur l'épaule, les murmures délicats, ils sont donnés et n'attendent rien en retour.'
'Poser les armes. Accepter une vie qu'on n'a pas choisie. Reconnaître sa défaite pour ne pas s'abandonner dans la fuite. Enlever les chaussures et faire un calin des pieds. Rire sans retenue. La petite bestiole s'agit sous l'effet des chatouilles.
Aimer ses éclats de voix. Connaître par coeur le rythme de ses hoquets. Être un enfant. Ne pas pouvoir dire qui on était. Ne pas savoir qui on est. Comprendre que ça n'a pas d'importance. Embrasser son dos. Renifler son odeur. Manger sa peau. Être un père.'
'Poser les armes. Accepter une vie qu'on n'a pas choisie. Reconnaître sa défaite pour ne pas s'abandonner dans la fuite. Enlever les chaussures et faire un calin des pieds. Rire sans retenue. La petite bestiole s'agit sous l'effet des chatouilles.
Aimer ses éclats de voix. Connaître par coeur le rythme de ses hoquets. Être un enfant. Ne pas pouvoir dire qui on était. Ne pas savoir qui on est. Comprendre que ça n'a pas d'importance. Embrasser son dos. Renifler son odeur. Manger sa peau. Être un père.'
January 26, 2021
In dit boek lees je het verhaal van Antoine die zijn vrouw heeft verloren tijdens de aanslag in 2015 in Bataclan. Antoine moet samen met zijn peuterzoon verder met leven en dat gaat met ups en downs. Antoine kan dit heel mooi beschrijven. Hij is een echte woordkunstenaar. Zijn gevoelens zet hij rauw neer.
Dit is het vervolg op zijn boek: Mijn haat krijgen jullie niet. Als je dit boek nog niet hebt gelezen, raad ik je aan om dit eerst te doen.
Dit is het vervolg op zijn boek: Mijn haat krijgen jullie niet. Als je dit boek nog niet hebt gelezen, raad ik je aan om dit eerst te doen.
August 2, 2024
Moeilijk om te lezen. Springt van het ene naar het andere en vanuit de 1ste persoon naar de 3de persoon. Dit maakt het moeilijk om het verhaal te volgen. Lijkt meer op hersenspinsels die genoteerd werden dan een verhaal. Niet echt mijn ding
November 3, 2024
I read this as a follow-up to You Will Not Have My Hate. For me, it was a little disjointed, maybe because he covered a much longer period of time and because he tried to bring his parents more into the narrative to address some of the reasons he is the way he is. Liked, but didn't love
October 17, 2020
Gelezen in de Nederlandse vertaling
March 14, 2021
La vie qui continue, le renouveau. La relation père fils toujours plus forte. Un beau récit même si j’ai eu du mal à accrocher.
September 19, 2021
Moins bien que son premier livre. J ai eu beaucoup de difficultés a le suivre
February 19, 2022
Comment on vit en famille après la mort, après le deuil. Très beau texte, plein d’amour.
March 26, 2022
Merçi pour cet après Mr Leiris. Ce n'est pas facile de se reconstruire. Courage et beaucoup d'amour à vous deux.
October 21, 2024
Die Message ist sehr schön und es ist auch sehr besonders geschrieben, aber mich hat das erste Buch mehr abgeholt. Letztlich ist es mehr eine Geschichte, die der Autor für sich und seinen Sohn schreibt als für die Lesenden und das ist auch sehr schön.
December 11, 2019
Le lendemain des attentats du Bataclan, Antoine Leiris publie une lettre ouverte aux assassins de sa femme : Vous n’aurez pas ma haine. Peu après, il s’arme de sa plume pour faire face à la perte : il témoigne avec beaucoup de vulnérabilité sur les jours d’après, la vie meurtrie d’un père et son fils alors âgé de 17 mois. Ce premier récit de vie m’a bouleversée mais aussi réchauffée le coeur : ce n’est jamais triste, jamais haineux, mais tendre et plein d’espoir. Alors, quatre ans plus tard, il raconte la vie, après. Il est ce papa qui fait tout pour leur reconstruire une vie normale. Il a fallu déménager, trier les affaires du passé et recommencer dans de nouveaux lieux, sans oublier. Bien que j’ai été plus touchée par le premier livre, j’ai apprécié suivre le quotidien de ce père qui tâtonne et manque d’assurance, cet homme qui fait face aux fantômes du passé avec courage et détermination. Le ton est sincère et grave, mais posé… on sent que pour Antoine et Melvil, le ciel se dégage enfin.
« Aujourd’hui, nous sommes heureux et libres. Libres de notre histoire, forts de notre histoire. »
(Extrait de mon post de mini-chroniques sur mon blog despetitsnuages.blogspot.com)
« Aujourd’hui, nous sommes heureux et libres. Libres de notre histoire, forts de notre histoire. »
(Extrait de mon post de mini-chroniques sur mon blog despetitsnuages.blogspot.com)
December 29, 2025
I learnt about Parisian journalist Antoine Leiris’ slim memoir, Life, After, from a review in The Guardian, which called it ‘powerful and revealing’. This heartbreaking work of non-fiction deals with the long-term ripples of the Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris, on the 13th of November 2015, in which his wife, Hélène, was killed. Hélène’s death resulted in Leiris being the only carer of their very young son, 17-month-old Melvil.
Horribly, I started to read Life, After on the same day that there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester. This date also marked almost a decade since the Paris attacks.
Translated by Sam Taylor, Life, After was first published in French in 2019, and is Leiris’ second memoir. His first, You Will Not Have My Hate, is about Hélène’s murder and the immediate aftermath, but I have sadly found it rather difficult to get my hands on a copy to date, and have not been able to read his books in order. Of this memoir, which spans ‘four long years’, and ‘finds a way to answer the question, “How can I go on?”’, Leiris writes: ‘I tried to record those metamorphoses, the tides of change that have transformed us since our world vanished in a mist, up to the moment when – almost suddenly – the sky clears.’
Leiris originally set out to write a novel: ‘My imagination was wholly focused on the invention of our new life. I couldn’t conceive of anything beyond that necessity: saving us, creating spaces where we could live, and inhabiting them. Existing.’
He is candid from the outset: ‘I never wrote: “Hélène’s death”. I don’t say it, and even writing it now feels wrong. I just vaguely locate periods of time by specifying “before” or “after”.’ He also writes of how he compartmentalises the facts, in order to better deal with them: ‘I must stop the love of a whole lifetime at the moment when it broke. Then break it apart into images and instants. Categorise them and tidy them into little boxes, where they can live once again.’
A particularly sad vignette follows him as he begins to clear his wife’s belongings away, before he and Melvil move to a new home in a different suburb of Paris: ‘I have to accomplish in a few hours what I have been putting off for months: to sort through all her things, to face up to the real shape of grief. The apartment feels like it’s flooded with water, a continuous body of liquid, pouring through, filling the cracks, spreading over the surface.’ Following this, he writes of his mother-in-law: ‘I take her a cardboard box filled with things from the old apartment. I give her back her daughter but keep my wife. They are two people now and never again will they be the same. They will each exist independently of the other in the stories that we tell about them.’
Leiris is also very honest about his difficulties of suddenly being thrust into single parenthood, and the barriers that he sees between himself and his young son after their immense loss: ‘Sometimes I have the impression that a wall rises between us. He is on the other side. I see him pacing around. He can’t hear me. He’s in his own world. It’s not that he’s not listening to me, more that I’m not speaking to him. He’s there, in his little goldfish bowl, and I am watching him from mine.’
Life, After is beautifully written. The entirety is tender and heartfelt, and an incredible power suffuses the whole. Although I cannot begin to understand his loss, and its reverberations, some elements of Leiris’ story were relatable to me: the process and anxiety of moving, and how to mourn just two examples.
I will close this review with a beautiful quote from Leiris’ memoir: ‘The memory of Hélène comes back to me. To write about her is to breathe life into her. To understand that she was there all along.’
Horribly, I started to read Life, After on the same day that there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue in Manchester. This date also marked almost a decade since the Paris attacks.
Translated by Sam Taylor, Life, After was first published in French in 2019, and is Leiris’ second memoir. His first, You Will Not Have My Hate, is about Hélène’s murder and the immediate aftermath, but I have sadly found it rather difficult to get my hands on a copy to date, and have not been able to read his books in order. Of this memoir, which spans ‘four long years’, and ‘finds a way to answer the question, “How can I go on?”’, Leiris writes: ‘I tried to record those metamorphoses, the tides of change that have transformed us since our world vanished in a mist, up to the moment when – almost suddenly – the sky clears.’
Leiris originally set out to write a novel: ‘My imagination was wholly focused on the invention of our new life. I couldn’t conceive of anything beyond that necessity: saving us, creating spaces where we could live, and inhabiting them. Existing.’
He is candid from the outset: ‘I never wrote: “Hélène’s death”. I don’t say it, and even writing it now feels wrong. I just vaguely locate periods of time by specifying “before” or “after”.’ He also writes of how he compartmentalises the facts, in order to better deal with them: ‘I must stop the love of a whole lifetime at the moment when it broke. Then break it apart into images and instants. Categorise them and tidy them into little boxes, where they can live once again.’
A particularly sad vignette follows him as he begins to clear his wife’s belongings away, before he and Melvil move to a new home in a different suburb of Paris: ‘I have to accomplish in a few hours what I have been putting off for months: to sort through all her things, to face up to the real shape of grief. The apartment feels like it’s flooded with water, a continuous body of liquid, pouring through, filling the cracks, spreading over the surface.’ Following this, he writes of his mother-in-law: ‘I take her a cardboard box filled with things from the old apartment. I give her back her daughter but keep my wife. They are two people now and never again will they be the same. They will each exist independently of the other in the stories that we tell about them.’
Leiris is also very honest about his difficulties of suddenly being thrust into single parenthood, and the barriers that he sees between himself and his young son after their immense loss: ‘Sometimes I have the impression that a wall rises between us. He is on the other side. I see him pacing around. He can’t hear me. He’s in his own world. It’s not that he’s not listening to me, more that I’m not speaking to him. He’s there, in his little goldfish bowl, and I am watching him from mine.’
Life, After is beautifully written. The entirety is tender and heartfelt, and an incredible power suffuses the whole. Although I cannot begin to understand his loss, and its reverberations, some elements of Leiris’ story were relatable to me: the process and anxiety of moving, and how to mourn just two examples.
I will close this review with a beautiful quote from Leiris’ memoir: ‘The memory of Hélène comes back to me. To write about her is to breathe life into her. To understand that she was there all along.’
June 7, 2020
Une belle suite, remplie d'espoir, à Vous n'aurez pas ma haine. Leiris n'oublie pas mais il surmonte, et c'est toujours aussi beau!
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews