Women’s Chorus
Martin Winckler
Aug 2009 - Gallimard
Sex and Body
The novel Le Chœur des femmes (trad. : “The Women’s Chorus”) is the explosive encounter, in a women’s medicine department, between a pure product of the medical institution and a free spirit doctor.
Their dialogues question the doctor/patient relationship, the way practitioners take pain into account and how to listen to each other’s stories, etc. Without forgetting a family story as a backdrop to keep the suspense alive.
I have literally devoured this book. And I got a slap in the face when I discovered the author’s criticism of the medical world: medicine considers my body less as a part of me than as an object of care. It is then understandable not to be really associated with the treatment, not to answer my questions pedagogically, to dispossess myself of my body somehow, or even to burst into my intimacy.
Martin Winckler thus puts his finger on violence that is so discreet and so ingrained in my daily life as a patient that I had not even identified it as such. The parallel with the question of feminine pleasure is obvious to me: one must regain possession of one’s body in the intimate sphere but also in the medical sphere, the two being inextricably linked. And the 600 pages of the novel give us the energy and determination to tackle it!
Judith