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A solo trip to Paris in 2005 sparked a decades-long creative journey for Marlène Mauris, culminating in her debut novel, Escarpées. The book recently earned Mauris the prestigious Prix du Roman des Romands, awarded by a panel of 500 students across Switzerland and comes with a 15,000 franc prize from the Minkoff Foundation.
The story centers around a young French woman named Feodora, originally from Grenoble, who arrives in England and then travels to the mountains as a nanny. She’s there to fill a void left by a mother’s tragic death – a woman lost in a river current in the 1990s, leaving behind a grieving husband and three daughters. Mauris chose the name Feodora because it was a name she remembered fondly from a trip to a Parisian café, scribbled on a sugar packet. “Joli nom,” she recalled thinking at the time, a name that would stay with her.
Feodora embodies the spirit of the lost mother, Annette, who dreamed of a life of freedom and creativity. An artist herself, Feodora arrives with a sketchbook, hoping to find inspiration in the mountainous landscape and the lives of the local farmers. Annette, meanwhile, loved her daughters fiercely, but also harbored a secret resentment: “Without her children, she would be so free today. She would study, she would travel, she would love men and be loved by them.”
