TRISTE TIGRE

NEIGE SINNO

288pp. Editions P.O.L. 20 [euro].

Neige Sinno was born in an Alpine village to hippie parents who were barely more than children themselves. Her birth was written up in the local newspaper of a community that seemed pleasantly surprised that a pair of outsiders would choose to make it their home. Her name--"neige" means snow--and her start in life almost recall a fairy tale, yet Sinno's struggle for self-realization exceeds such simple framing.

After her parents' relationship ended her mother married a man who was to abuse and rape Neige from the age of about seven to her mid-teens. Triste Tigre--the title inspired by Blake's poem The Tyger - is a forensic exploration of how to speak about the unspeakable and how to define the domain of the unspeakable. This includes what was done to Sinno, what that did to her, how it fashioned the person she became and who the person was who did this to her. She analyses language, literature, the penal code, the "interminable interpretation" of facts. She describes the rapist, the child she was, the person she is, what happened when she told her mother and,...