'Healthcare has become a business,' Julia Deck's cry

"Ann, my mother, has always been 'étrangère.' I use the word in French because it means both 'foreigner' and 'unknown.' And that's how I've always perceived her: a woman I loved, but never truly knew." With these words, French writer Julia Deck introduced her new novel, "Ann of England" (Adelphi), winner of the 2024 Médicis Prize, at the Pordenonelegge festival. This work of autofiction stems from a personal urgency and transforms into a collective investigation: into the mystery of mothers, the fragility of the body, and the crumbling of public institutions, especially in healthcare.

"I've always had trouble grasping my mother's essence," Deck said at a press conference. "She was born in the 1930s, lived through almost the entire 20th century, lived in various countries, changed social identities, and experienced a thousand lives. Yet for me, and for many of our family members, she remained an elusive figure. A character from a novel." And it's precisely as a character that Julia Deck has chosen to portray her. After five fictional novels, "Ann of England" is the author's first autobiographical book: a choice, she says, "almost transgressive." "Until now, I'd always kept to the world of fiction, because it protects," the author said. "You invent a plot, characters, a distance. Writing about yourself, on the other hand, exposes you. It was dangerous, but necessary."

The book intertwines two parallel stories: a portrait of Ann, the English mother, and the raw, concrete account of her healthcare journey in contemporary France. A mother who falls ill, and a daughter who finds herself facing not only grief, but the collapse of a system.

"Writing wasn't painful. On the contrary: it gave me energy," Julia Deck explained to Adnkronos. "Energy to tackle two mysteries: that of my family and that of public health. I didn't write to process; I don't believe in therapeutic literature. But writing had a side effect: it allowed me to understand."

Deck has no doubts: French public healthcare is in decline. And the proof, for her, lies in comparing two experiences lived ten years apart: "My grandmother, hospitalized ten years earlier for the same problem, received completely different care. In a decade, I've seen the system collapse. It's no longer a medical issue: it's become administrative, corporate. It's as if healthcare has been transformed into a business." The denunciation is clear, although the author prefers to call it an "observation." "I'm in favor of public service," Deck clarified. "It was thanks to public schools that my mother was able to study, explore literature, and build a life different from the one her social context promised her. But today, all of this is crumbling. Not just in France: throughout Europe."

"Ann of England" is a book that begins with her mother and extends to the present. It examines the personal to reach the political. But it remains profoundly literary. "My novels often arise from a sense of rebellion," Deck emphasized. "In this case, it arose from disillusionment with institutions. I tried to share my experience, but I discovered that many others were experiencing the same thing. Perhaps this experience isn't just subjective."

To those who pointed out that many French authors, over the past year and especially this September, with the hundreds of new releases in the French literary season, have published novels about their mothers, Deck responded with irony: "It's true, there's been an epidemic of mother novels. Fortunately, I wrote it first, a year ago. But perhaps there's a deeper reason. Perhaps, in an age where everything is filtered by screens, we seek reality. We work in front of a screen, we travel with our smartphones, we come home and watch Netflix. We live in a fictional world." Literature, Julia Deck suggested, could today be a form of resistance to the virtual. "Perhaps writers are trying to rediscover a concrete truth. In memory, in roots, in the land. Not just in family roots, but in the very substance of reality."

Deck concluded his speech with an insight that could already be the beginning of his next book: "It's a personal theory, but I believe that literature today is trying to respond to the loss of reality. Perhaps it's time to write a book about this." (by Paolo Martini)