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Publisher: Gazebo

Published in English (12/2024)

ISBN 978-0-6459209-9-4

Lisette is a tribute to the author's friend, Lisette Nigot. A tribute to recall her luminous personality, her humor, her wisdom, the highlights of their friendship but also the lessons that Catherine Rey learned from her.

The book was conceived as a moral reflection on a subject that is rarely discussed: suicide among the elderly, not the tragic suicide of people who are depressed and want to end their lives, but the thought-out, desired, planned suicide of all those who, having reached a certain age, have decided to end their days after a full and often happy life. The weariness of living, as conceived by Greek philosophy, the "taedium vitae" is a reality that bothers us and often escapes us since the idea of living as long as possible has become the priority of our modern societies. There is a moral void there. The memory of Lisette allowed C. Rey to reflect on this unknown.

"In August 2002, French-born writer Catherine Rey made a commitment to write a book for her French friend Lisette, whose name is also the title of the book. Rey was 45 that year. Lisette Nigot, who was 79, had made the decision to end her life before she reached 80. It took Rey twenty years to be ready to fulfill this commitment. Underneath its simple exterior, the book is a magnificent portrait of Lisette and the friendship between the two women, as well as an evocation of Lisette's youth and maturity as she rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as Charles de Gaulle and Marilyn Monroe. But the book is also a moving and profound meditation on youth, old age, and death as the author gradually unravels the reasons for Lisette's act of killing herself. The scenes in which Rey imagines her friend's final hours are poignant and Lisette's death is evoked as a triumph. The whole is impressive."

Steven Carroll, author and literary critic at the Sydney Morning Herald

" What a wonderful work this is. Not a word wasted, and so much space for pain and ambiguity and speculation to di its work. In Rey's hands, an exquisitely intimate choice becomes universal, a deep meditation on life and its endings "
Hugh Riminton, journalist, author of Minefields : A life in the news game.