It was a “small woman”, as she described herself, 1m 52 to 43 kg, black eyes, and brilliant. The writer Christine de Rivoyre died in Paris at the age of 97 years. It had been a few literary prizes – including the Interallié in 1968 to Morning – but even more loyal readers who praised his love of nature, his tenderness and strokes his claw.
The cinema had taken over three of his novels: Sultans , adapted by Jean Delannoy with Gina Lollobrigida in 1966, The Mandarin , directed in 1971 by Edouard Molinaro, with Annie Girardot and The morning . This last narrait a love story (still taboo at the time) between a young girl and a German rider on the Occupation, setting images in 1971 by Jean-Gabriel Albicocco with Mathieu Carrière and Catherine Jourdan.
” READ ALSO – Flying Fox , Christine de Rivoyre: a history of france
a Member of the jury Medici from 1971 to 2017, this single was first lived in Paris before settling, at the end of the 1970s, in the family home of Onesse-Laharie, surrounded by airial (garden half-wild) and close to the golden beaches of the Atlantic. It is in this village that lived in her sisters. She didn’t know to cook but had prefaced the book The cuisine landaise written by the latter, Éliane and Jacquette.
In Paris, she said, “I was a journalist, I saw wonderful people like Faulkner or Morand. I was in love. And sports. And the restless. One day, my mother is dead. I looked at this house that was going to die if we do not care. So, I went there. With my dog, and music. And I had a lot of seconds to me…”.
Christine de Rivoyre was born in Tarbes (Hautes-Pyrenees) on November 29, 1921. She was the granddaughter of an explorer and the daughter of an officer, equerry to the black frame of Saumur, one of the great riders of his time.
A former critic of theatre and dance, passionate about botany
After studying in Bordeaux, Poitiers and The Sorbonne, she, like the stock market, in the United States to study journalism at the university of Syracuse (New York State). It is here that was born one of his first passions: botany. “How can we live without glycine?”, ask the character of one of his books.
From 1950 to 1955, she is a critic of theatre and dance at the log The World then, for ten years, Marie Claire , as literary director. The magazine separated from it in 1966: ‘no matter, she will live by her pen and will later settle in the Barrens.
She writes Flower of agony in 1970 and Boy in 1973 (500.000 copies sold). In this novel, she creates a character, inspired by the servant of his grandmother and his mother, Mary Lacoste. “I wish to one day be buried beside of her,” she said of this woman, who died in 1981 at the age of 94 years, who was devoted to three generations of the family of Rivoyre.
he Is also Belle-Alliance (1982), Queen mother (1985), the portrait of a tormented family: his, Dusk one size (1989) or Tell me about flamboyant (1995).
After a silence of a dozen years, it is found in 2007 with Archaka (on a friend writer disappeared) and, in 2014, with a book of memories (in collaboration), Flying Fox and other portraits , the name of one of those horses that loved this worshipper of nature.
