ŷ������

Many of those of us with a thinly veiled past have a Daemon, which demands to be fed. That fact is also the shadow that drives mental illness. “Feed me! Feed me,�� it screams at me: and a chance circumstance offers me the option of releasing it in a book review.

Otherwise I’d be eaten alive.

Percy Shelley, like most creative writers or artists, knew it too. And it called out to him to be released as well. It was the advent of the Romantic Era. Even romance novels have a thinly veiled past!

This book is Romain Gary’s daemon unleashed, too. It was do or die time. He even published it under his Real name, for a change. It was a hit in France, of course. It won the Goncourt.

It’s a pity you can’t see an English version, though you can watch a sanitized - without Gary’s rude argot - French version on YouTube. The complete film may be viewed there! Its title is Madame Rosa.

Hate to tell you, but this review will be another “in progress�� one. You see, I’m forced to periodically EXORCISE the evil of that foul daemon within me. Or else be poisoned by it! So the review is destined to morph.

As the doomed reporter, Howard, on the seventies film Network screamed: now I’m mad as heck and can’t take it anymore.

***

This novel is just SO touching!

Madame Rosa runs a home for traumatized orphans in the Jewish quarter, like the young Arab narrator - ‘Momo,�� short for Mohammed - for whom brute trauma has blanked out whole sections of his past. I live with that every day. My trauma in the Royally Awful Hospital, similarly, is now largely a void.

And the tell-all sessions in isolation were likewise chemically blanked out in my head.

But the young orphan in the novel has no other life than his destroyed one. He even gets ugly. When he receives a hug from a neighbouring stranger, his shocked gratitude knows no bounds.

What is this thing called Love? It lives beneath the surface of our destroyed self.

Our adoptive Collie/Shepherd Brandy (RIP, old amigo) was a rescue pet. Get one like her and you will see a remarkable acceleration of your wellness quotient! She was SO grateful to us for taking her in from the storm.

I sense the author was a ‘rescue��, too.

***

And I was rescued as well. My rescuer’s name is Common Sense.

Mr. Sense lives secretly (and so ordinarily that we often miss him) in an Aspie’s soul, hidden - unless that handicapped kid sees him clearly and as he really is. And he can only see him if that kid reveals himself to himself through others.

That was my alchemical method on ŷ������ - revealing myself to myself in ever more telling reviews. And taking to heart the comments!

“J’ai percé un trou dans la voile de toile�� - in the chemical blitz of my meds��

Just as Gary digs the dirt on himself here! And thus finds his self, formerly lost in a void.

The bottom line is to no longer be afraid of one’s self, or of what that self may say or do - until it's time to show your left hand that the right one (common sense) knows what it's up to.

Then it’s the final coup de Grace -

In reviews which fully display “le coeur mis à nu…��

Of stunning Neverwhere books like THIS!