"The Nomadic Lovers", by Jennifer Lesieur: Stevenson passion

We were waiting for someone, in the wake of the late writer Michel Le Bris (who was the creator of the Etonnants Voyageurs festival), who would continue to make Stevenson, Robert Louis by his first name, the timeless author of "Treasure Island", loved and read. This someone is a someone: Jennifer Lesieur, winner of the 2008 Prix Goncourt for biography for her investigation into Jack London. The life of the Stevensons – Jennifer Lesieur indeed gives full space to Fanny, the writer's great love – no longer holds any secrets for her. And how beautiful are the pages where she recounts the love at first sight between these two, he, the puny bourgeois from Edinburgh, in catastrophic health all his life, often on the verge of death; she, a solid girl from the Far West, handling the Colt and the rifle like no one else, a mother three times before they met, capable of building their house with her own hands, and who is a little offended, all the same, that her young lover finds her "peasant at heart" . Also very beautiful is the night when Stevenson has the nightmare that will throw him at his desk for three days, the time to write "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". And he will throw all his pages into the fire, out of respect, to show Fanny how he takes into account what she says (she doesn't find it very good) and rewrite it, in three days again, as it has come down to us. Hats off to this little sister of Michel Le Bris.

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