Ca la Wenling

Have someone on the other side of the earth make the headache to come and live in your country. That they choose you for your neighbor. Let your children grow up in your tongue so they love what you love. And that this one who works in a hairdressing salon twelve hours a day, six days a week, moored at your feet, hands and hair, is generous in telling you about his world. There's a good pinch of Wenling China, right here. A good pinch of Zhejiang province, where it came one day from ten years ago. But there are more perfumes everywhere, in this manicure house, sheared and permanent. There are Grace retirees, stubborn young women, a pregnant woman in love, tears of the Vietnam War, French cosmetics, injustices wrought in America, and well-rooted racism. That's why Wenling is called that because modesty outside hides a real reservoir of humanity, a catalyst that starts confidences, unearths tragedies and bursts out laughter. An exchange center for affections that serves both the neighborhood and the outpatient, the school or the market. And tightening the whole book up and down, the gift of a friendship. Because this novel also celebrates breaking the ice, looking into the eyes, starting a conversation. Because it is possible to transform the lost in translation into a crazy desire to make yourself understood.