I'M STILL HERE
Clelie Avit
Hachette
By RACHEL GURNEY
What if you were stuck in a coma unable to see, feel or move, but able to hear?
This is the situation Elsa Bilier finds herself in after an ice-climbing accident.
Her parents, sister (with a string of boyfriends) and friends visit, but after 14 weeks of no response, they are starting to give up.
When Elsa regains her hearing she still can't communicate, so spends an agonising further six weeks seemingly unresponsive to all around her. She describes herself as "a squatter in her own body''.
I thought she would have been angry and frustrated, but perhaps she has dealt with that, as the novel picks up at the 20-week mark of her coma.
While doctors and her family discuss "pulling the plug'' she seems determined to make a difference, concentrating on small things like trying to turn her head and open her eyes.
Meanwhile, Thibault Gramont is avoiding visiting his brother, Sylvain, who is recovering in the same hospital after he killed two teenage girls while driving drunk, and stumbles into Elsa's room.
He is fascinated by her, and her story and situation, and she is aware of a new person who possibly provides hope.
This is Clelie Avit's first novel to be translated into English, and nothing appears to have been lost in her descriptive passages.
We discover the beauty and solitude, yet danger, of the French mountains, and Elsa's thoughts are well explored, including the way she attributes colours, sensations and objects to the people she can hear, as her only working sense becomes heightened.
Minor characters are developed to varying degrees. There are Elsa's friends and family, Thibault's mother and his friend Julien (with his wife Gaelle and daughter Clara), and a junior doctor and a cleaner, although they are mainly sounding boards, not contributing a lot to the plot.
As the story unfolds (in alternate chapters with Elsa and Thibault each in the first person), we experience love and loss, hope and despair, triumph and tragedy, and an overwhelming sense of the power of the mind and positive thinking.
Take it as an easy read, almost fairytale-like, or as a platform for further contemplation.
- Rachel Gurney is an avid Dunedin reader.
