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The Child Who
A village boy wanders through a forest with a phantomatic dog. His mother is gone; his father speechless with anger; his grandmother concealing her own story.
‘A work of startling beauty.’ —Xavier Houssin, ELLE
‘Jeanne Benameur’s work is carved out of silences. Her characters use few words, while she chooses her own with a parsimony that increases their impact tenfold. Suffused in mystery, this novel—about what makes a family, how a personality emerges, how one learns to inhabit the world—is fashioned from a poetry as startling as its title.’ — Raphaëlle Leyris, Le Monde
‘It’s a brief story, but a prodigiously compact one—the hallmark of all Jeanne Benameur’s books. It’s impossible to say enough good things about her, for the loveliest assessments will never adequately convey her talent.’ — Mohammed Aïssaoui, Le Figaro
‘For those with the sensibility to respond to its poetic voice, Jeanne Benameur’s L’enfant qui and the excellent English translation by Bill Johnston have the power to change lives. Existential beyond any philosophical system, the book carefully, lyrically explores the phenomenon of being as it occurs in each of three unnamed family members in an unnamed French village at an unnamed time—a young boy who has lost his mother and who refrains from speaking except to chant lyrically in the solitude of the forest; his artisan, alcoholic father, crippled by fear of life; and the boy’s sturdy grandmother, who shuts out by singing whatever she can’t resolve, including her disappointing God.’ — Lynn Hoggard
‘A marvel.’ —Claire Conruyt, Le Figaro Littéraire
‘A work of startling beauty.’ —Xavier Houssin, ELLE
‘Jeanne Benameur’s work is carved out of silences. Her characters use few words, while she chooses her own with a parsimony that increases their impact tenfold. Suffused in mystery, this novel—about what makes a family, how a personality emerges, how one learns to inhabit the world—is fashioned from a poetry as startling as its title.’ — Raphaëlle Leyris, Le Monde
‘It’s a brief story, but a prodigiously compact one—the hallmark of all Jeanne Benameur’s books. It’s impossible to say enough good things about her, for the loveliest assessments will never adequately convey her talent.’ — Mohammed Aïssaoui, Le Figaro
‘For those with the sensibility to respond to its poetic voice, Jeanne Benameur’s L’enfant qui and the excellent English translation by Bill Johnston have the power to change lives. Existential beyond any philosophical system, the book carefully, lyrically explores the phenomenon of being as it occurs in each of three unnamed family members in an unnamed French village at an unnamed time—a young boy who has lost his mother and who refrains from speaking except to chant lyrically in the solitude of the forest; his artisan, alcoholic father, crippled by fear of life; and the boy’s sturdy grandmother, who shuts out by singing whatever she can’t resolve, including her disappointing God.’ — Lynn Hoggard
‘A marvel.’ —Claire Conruyt, Le Figaro Littéraire
128 pages, Unknown Binding
First published May 29, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 1, 2025
In your head of a child there are sudden bright skies wrested from a low, lingering, unfathomable sadness. Your mother has disappeared. Never mind that she was never entirely present, it was her smell, her warmth, her silent hands that you relied on to feel that you truly existed.
The Child Who is a translation of Jeanne Benameur's L'Enfant qui. The translation is by Bill Johnston who was hitherto better known to me as translating from Polish (his Stone Upon Stone, from an original by Wiesław Myśliwski, won the Best Translated Book Award), but who is clearly equally accomplished in translations from French.
It is the 23rd book from the wonderful publisher Les Fugitives, who specialise in Francophone literature. My reviews of all of their books can be found on my dedicated shelf.
The Child Who is narrated in the second person, addressed to a child. His mother, from an itinerant background, has disappeared leaving his father, a cabinet maker, who is wedded to the locale (even the trip to a town where, at a fair, he met the boy's mother, was for him an expedition), angry and confused and the boy, caught between his mother's wandering spirit and his father's deep roots, bereft and silent.
Your father's calves are heavy from work. He moves heedlessly into the day as it repeats its chores, one by one, the same as always. The child that you are is a puzzle to him. He was unable to keep your mother. She was a stranger. He may not even have wanted to, deep down. Let her be torn from his life the way she'd entered it, all at once!
Let this desire that keeps him caged in be torn out too! Her absence doesn't even set him free. It growls like an animal. The opaqueness of his own desire scares him.
A vagabond, she was. But do vagabonds leave traces? He still has the strange drawing she scribbled before she went away. He's never shown it to anyone. Sometimes, when he's all alone he unfolds it, studies it. Nothing. It's no use turning the paper this way and that. He doesn't understand what she left him.
This 'not understanding what she left him' applying equally to the cryptic diagram as to their boy. Indeed this incomprehension, and the boy's father's anger, dates to the start of their relationship:
The shouting had entered the house along with the woman. He'd started to shout, as if at moments his entire being rejected her. Because no, he hadn't chosen her. He'd merely wanted her. Because he understood nothing of this desire that had overcome him, yet he wanted her all the same. Again and again. As for her, she didn't know the language of these parts and didn't even try to learn it. She kept silent but she stayed. He didn't know why she stayed. That was how you were born. Torn from your father's shouts and the silence of your mother. In your mother's belly you learned the violence of living.
And meanwhile his mother, the boy's grandmother, watches on with an old secret of her own. And the unidentified narrator would dearly love to offer the boy physical comfort, the same he appears to take from a canine companion that no one else can see.
The setting of the novel - deeply rural, timeless indeed verging on the primeval - has some similarities with the work of Ariana Harwicz, but with a more poetic and compassionate sensibility.
A lovely take on the book can be found at this blog (https://www.poetryinternationalonline...) which includes speculation on the identity of the clearly ‘involved’ narrator - the author who may identify with some of the boy’s experiences, the boy’s mother, a fictitious sister, or even the boy himself looking back as an adult? - or more likely a combination of these.
Recommended - the sort of short, powerful book that on finishing, I found myself immediately re-reading, with additional layers and images (a bracelet worn by his mother) emerging on a second read.
The Child Who is a translation of Jeanne Benameur's L'Enfant qui. The translation is by Bill Johnston who was hitherto better known to me as translating from Polish (his Stone Upon Stone, from an original by Wiesław Myśliwski, won the Best Translated Book Award), but who is clearly equally accomplished in translations from French.
It is the 23rd book from the wonderful publisher Les Fugitives, who specialise in Francophone literature. My reviews of all of their books can be found on my dedicated shelf.
The central tenets of our list include, but are not limited to:
- Women’s voices,
- A focus on short works, which we believe make for an ideal introduction to an author’s oeuvre,
- The exploration of trans-genre and non-linear narratives, following in the footsteps of the Modernists,
- A particular affinity for narratives concerned with cinema, the visual arts and music.
The Child Who is narrated in the second person, addressed to a child. His mother, from an itinerant background, has disappeared leaving his father, a cabinet maker, who is wedded to the locale (even the trip to a town where, at a fair, he met the boy's mother, was for him an expedition), angry and confused and the boy, caught between his mother's wandering spirit and his father's deep roots, bereft and silent.
Your father's calves are heavy from work. He moves heedlessly into the day as it repeats its chores, one by one, the same as always. The child that you are is a puzzle to him. He was unable to keep your mother. She was a stranger. He may not even have wanted to, deep down. Let her be torn from his life the way she'd entered it, all at once!
Let this desire that keeps him caged in be torn out too! Her absence doesn't even set him free. It growls like an animal. The opaqueness of his own desire scares him.
A vagabond, she was. But do vagabonds leave traces? He still has the strange drawing she scribbled before she went away. He's never shown it to anyone. Sometimes, when he's all alone he unfolds it, studies it. Nothing. It's no use turning the paper this way and that. He doesn't understand what she left him.
This 'not understanding what she left him' applying equally to the cryptic diagram as to their boy. Indeed this incomprehension, and the boy's father's anger, dates to the start of their relationship:
The shouting had entered the house along with the woman. He'd started to shout, as if at moments his entire being rejected her. Because no, he hadn't chosen her. He'd merely wanted her. Because he understood nothing of this desire that had overcome him, yet he wanted her all the same. Again and again. As for her, she didn't know the language of these parts and didn't even try to learn it. She kept silent but she stayed. He didn't know why she stayed. That was how you were born. Torn from your father's shouts and the silence of your mother. In your mother's belly you learned the violence of living.
And meanwhile his mother, the boy's grandmother, watches on with an old secret of her own. And the unidentified narrator would dearly love to offer the boy physical comfort, the same he appears to take from a canine companion that no one else can see.
The setting of the novel - deeply rural, timeless indeed verging on the primeval - has some similarities with the work of Ariana Harwicz, but with a more poetic and compassionate sensibility.
A lovely take on the book can be found at this blog (https://www.poetryinternationalonline...) which includes speculation on the identity of the clearly ‘involved’ narrator - the author who may identify with some of the boy’s experiences, the boy’s mother, a fictitious sister, or even the boy himself looking back as an adult? - or more likely a combination of these.
Recommended - the sort of short, powerful book that on finishing, I found myself immediately re-reading, with additional layers and images (a bracelet worn by his mother) emerging on a second read.
April 14, 2023
I love that the author dedicated the work to John Berger. It quickly becomes clear why.
One of many passages that resonated with me: “There is the time of clocks, that of the village, the time that passes since the disappearance of my mother and that can be counted. And then there's the other time, that which no one can see, a time in which the dead and the living are like the grass in the fields and the grass in gardens, similar and different. Separated by something than cannot be named. It's neither the colour, nor the walls of the gardens, nor the rocks that distinguishes them. Not even the attentions of garden-ers. It's something else, that we feel deep inside and that makes the difference. One day, we've lived as much time without them as with them. The time of our childhood has been left behind.”
One of many passages that resonated with me: “There is the time of clocks, that of the village, the time that passes since the disappearance of my mother and that can be counted. And then there's the other time, that which no one can see, a time in which the dead and the living are like the grass in the fields and the grass in gardens, similar and different. Separated by something than cannot be named. It's neither the colour, nor the walls of the gardens, nor the rocks that distinguishes them. Not even the attentions of garden-ers. It's something else, that we feel deep inside and that makes the difference. One day, we've lived as much time without them as with them. The time of our childhood has been left behind.”
November 17, 2024
i don’t know if reading this on a busy bus during rush hour in the centre of leeds was the best environment so maybe i would have enjoyed it more sat at home
May 29, 2025
+1 livre sur les mamans tristes
June 6, 2025
At this moment you feel you could enter into the secret of your mother's words. The words that she held back with her fine jaw. Like birds of unimaginable plumage beating against her closed teeth. Nestling in the roof of her mouth so close to her throat. The slightest thing and they would slip back down into the depths. So that by the time she unclenched the so-delicate bones of her jaw, it was too late.
[28]
March 12, 2021
Une métaphore filée, un exercice de style, c'est l'impression que me fait ce roman.
L'enfant qui est un long poème qui s'adresse à quelqu'un mais pas au lecteur. Des bribes d'introspection, des souvenirs jetés sur le papier et auxquels on a vainement tenté de mettre un fil conducteur mais qui semble être une excuse pour enrober les pensées de l'autrice.
Un joli bonbon plein d'émotions mais surtout rempli de vent.
L'enfant qui est un long poème qui s'adresse à quelqu'un mais pas au lecteur. Des bribes d'introspection, des souvenirs jetés sur le papier et auxquels on a vainement tenté de mettre un fil conducteur mais qui semble être une excuse pour enrober les pensées de l'autrice.
Un joli bonbon plein d'émotions mais surtout rempli de vent.
Read
June 25, 2023Comment se construire avec une faille dès l'enfance, avec des secrets et des silences ?
Quelques perles
"Ta mère avait dit que l'océan bordait la ville et il est là, mais toi, tu comprends le paysage autrement. C'est la ville qui borde l'océan. Elle a été construite pour donner des bords à ce qui n'en a pas parce que les hommes comme ton père, comme tous ceux des villages, ont besoin de lités. Ta mère, elle, s'en passait. Et toi ?"
Quelques perles
"Ta mère avait dit que l'océan bordait la ville et il est là, mais toi, tu comprends le paysage autrement. C'est la ville qui borde l'océan. Elle a été construite pour donner des bords à ce qui n'en a pas parce que les hommes comme ton père, comme tous ceux des villages, ont besoin de lités. Ta mère, elle, s'en passait. Et toi ?"
December 28, 2023
This little book feels like a treasure. It’s sort of a magical tale of dealing with the loss or the hole left by a person where love should be. In that space a connection between a child and an entity lies.
I think it’s a beautiful book for anyone who has lost someone and everyone who feels at a loss
I think it’s a beautiful book for anyone who has lost someone and everyone who feels at a loss
August 14, 2018
Même si j'aime beaucoup la magnifique et poétique ecriture de J Benameur, j'ai eu beaucoup de mal à rentrer dans le livre.il n'y a pas de faits, pas d'histoire si ce n'est par bribes d'introspection et souvenirs. Et puis on se laisse gagner par la magie des mots.
October 9, 2018
S’il faut quelques pages avant de rentrer dans l’histoire, l’histoire est puissante et magnifique, pleine d’intelligence.
C’est une histoire de liens de sang, de souvenirs, de douleur et de nature sauvage.
C’est une histoire de liens de sang, de souvenirs, de douleur et de nature sauvage.
May 12, 2017
Touchée en plein cœur.
January 30, 2018
Une sorte de long poème...
July 28, 2020
Écriture tendre et poétique mais la narration en tu-tu m'a perturbé. J'ai eu l'impression bizarre que l'autrice ne s'adressait pas à moi et je n'ai jamais compris à qui il parlait vraiment.
February 18, 2024
maybe need to read again lol this felt a little bit pretentious 😭 am i being racist against french people 😭😭
July 9, 2024
4.5 - beautifully written, enjoyed it way more than i expected to when i first picked it up, but some parts were a bit too coded in ornate language for me so i’ve knocked off 0.5
July 20, 2024
"But your mother has disappeared. People said, The Woman Who Disappeared.
No one ever knows how to lighten the sadness of mothers who disappear. Sadness itself does not disappear".
No one ever knows how to lighten the sadness of mothers who disappear. Sadness itself does not disappear".
October 6, 2024
Excessively whimsical, for my taste.
Read
July 23, 2025merci là vie
December 21, 2025
Même si on trouve quelques échantillons de beauté, ils sont parsemés dans ce poème sans structure de sentiments divers, métaphores et songes.
August 26, 2019
Roman sur la solitude et le deuil, L’enfant qui met en scène trois personnages : un petit garçon, son père et sa grand-mère. Ils évoluent tous les trois dans leur propre univers, n’ayant que très peu de contact réel les uns avec les autres. Ils marchent, et ils essayent tant bien que mal d’avancer. D’avancer sans cette femme, la mère, qui fait office de quatrième personnage sur roman, passive, disparue, et dont le souvenir hante chacun des personnages. Jeanne Benameur nous émeut magnifiquement avec son écriture à la fois poétique et parfois orale, à la frontière fine entre métaphore et réalité qui entraîne le lecteur à la suite de ces personnages qui essayent de se reconstruire après la perte.
>> http://untitledmag.fr/ete-2019-3-livr...
>> http://untitledmag.fr/ete-2019-3-livr...
December 9, 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4.5/5
Head empty, it took me two months to finish this book, not because it was insanely long, but that it requires thought, digestion, and repeated meditation to go through this 120-page book.
Tender, sweet, melancholic, The Child Who is a deeply contemplative prose that takes us through the eyes of a child, a man, and a grandmother who cope differently with the loss of a mother, a wife, and a daughter-in law. But despite her many identities, what stood out most for me is that she is a first a free woman before all of those. Fragmented yet linear, we witness a story of grief, the narrowness of growing up in a village where everybody knows everybody, and yet remains a stranger.
Poetic, lyrical, the beauty woven in each lines prompt me to hum as I read, putting on my favorite instrumental music on the background; at times whimsical, and at times primitive, it suggests a deeper, ancient darkness hidden in each of us, a longing to return to dust and soil. The Child Who touches upon an unknown, tender part of me. It reawakens my urges to write for the first time in over a year, and now i’m thinking to myself that perhaps I should pick up where i left off. When was the last time i was driven to write? My question led me to a rabbit hole of melancholy, for I know it is always unhappiness that drives me to write and create an alternative reality in my head.
The only reason this didn’t receive a 5 star is because of the ending, which I just couldn’t quite put a finger on why I didn’t like it.
[also, I will never trust the Goodread app ever again I was close to wrapping up my review when the app closes itself and I lost everything i’ve written, so here’s a compromised version of what I’ve written because apparently my memory lasts less than 3 seconds and I forgot entirely what I have just typed]
4.5/5
Head empty, it took me two months to finish this book, not because it was insanely long, but that it requires thought, digestion, and repeated meditation to go through this 120-page book.
Tender, sweet, melancholic, The Child Who is a deeply contemplative prose that takes us through the eyes of a child, a man, and a grandmother who cope differently with the loss of a mother, a wife, and a daughter-in law. But despite her many identities, what stood out most for me is that she is a first a free woman before all of those. Fragmented yet linear, we witness a story of grief, the narrowness of growing up in a village where everybody knows everybody, and yet remains a stranger.
Poetic, lyrical, the beauty woven in each lines prompt me to hum as I read, putting on my favorite instrumental music on the background; at times whimsical, and at times primitive, it suggests a deeper, ancient darkness hidden in each of us, a longing to return to dust and soil. The Child Who touches upon an unknown, tender part of me. It reawakens my urges to write for the first time in over a year, and now i’m thinking to myself that perhaps I should pick up where i left off. When was the last time i was driven to write? My question led me to a rabbit hole of melancholy, for I know it is always unhappiness that drives me to write and create an alternative reality in my head.
The only reason this didn’t receive a 5 star is because of the ending, which I just couldn’t quite put a finger on why I didn’t like it.
[also, I will never trust the Goodread app ever again I was close to wrapping up my review when the app closes itself and I lost everything i’ve written, so here’s a compromised version of what I’ve written because apparently my memory lasts less than 3 seconds and I forgot entirely what I have just typed]
April 11, 2025
A book I read when I felt the grief came back to me, when I was far far away from home, again, from the place of resting of the person I was grieving about. If this book is a human-ly gesture, this book is a hug to me - a not too tight, not too loose, not too warm, and not cold at all hug, the one I just needed back then.
June 19, 2021
Find my review at Poetry International Online: https://www.poetryinternationalonline...
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews