Gil Jouanard offers readers an exceptional book, a series of variations on the theme of words and writing. Based on a few episodes from his youth, he describes how language provides a structure for our relationship to the world. To put it another way, how, at the age of eight, as his parents were on the verge of divorce, the taciturn, contemplative child he had been suddenly started to talk. But what poured from his lips was not his own words, but those of the heroes of his favorite books – Zorro, Tarzan and Buffalo Bill – instead! As a teenager, love transformed his shyness and sensitivity. Love and music, which freed his voice, adding to his charm and changing how he related to other people… Those are just two of the many episodes in this book, which, by confronting our words, explores our relationship to our peers, a cross between independence and dialogue, singularity and resemblance.

Under the auspices of Montaigne and Rousseau, here is a book about what makes authors and voracious readers unique, both shy and open to others, other-worldly and free.

After Le nomade casanier and Les roses blanches, Gil Jouanard closes the trilogy about his childhood with a narrative about the power of words and writing.