Essayist representing French literature
Nathalie Leger writes about love and death

Some books can only be written once in a lifetime.
A book given to us as if by fate is likely to be a world completely different from the one the author had created.
“Following the Light of the Sky” is just such a book.
This book, written by Nathalie Léger, one of France's leading essayists, calmly describes the process of accepting the death of her husband, Jean-Loup Riveire, her lifelong companion, and is still very Léger-like.
Because the eulogies are full of aesthetic sentences and descriptions, and contain philosophical elements about life and death, or being left behind and leaving behind.


But one of the book's biggest themes is the realization that writing is always an imperfect product.
The act of putting thoughts and feelings into sentences inevitably leaves out some of the truth.
Even so, she writes as if it were her fate, despairing that she cannot fully express in words the loss of her loved one.
Because Nathalie Leger is a natural born writer who has no choice but to deal with even pain through writing.
『Following the Light of the Sky』 is a record of the realization, through the death of a loved one, that writing is always a work in progress and that the resulting piece is bound to be unfinished.


After her husband leaves, Reze encounters his death again in many places.
The last note found in the deceased's coat pocket, the comical boxing match scene in Charlie Chaplin's film "City Lights," Ivan Ilyich's dying scene in "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," and the story of the rescue dog trained to find drowning victims all remind me of my husband.
Even though she is tormented by the memories, she does not stop writing about the deceased.
The writing that follows is different from any other work the author has ever presented.
In normal times, Reze kept a certain distance between himself who writes and the other self who appears in his writing.
However, it is difficult to see her unique style in 『Following the Light of the Sky』.
Instead, I feel like I'm being shattered into a series of fragmented impressions and thoughts.
Through this, the reader is able to fully understand the loss that her husband's death left her with.

Not a single period, but the period itself, the only thing that remains in the end.
That death, that death itself.
The moment we pronounce that word, we fall apart.
We fell apart.
He whispered a few hours ago.
He, now struggling to communicate through simple gestures in silence, so exhausted that he could barely form words, had whispered this a few hours ago:
The period is love.

--- p.20

To escape this darkness, to tear myself away from this darkness, it will take enormous labor.
To escape from this death-like state of stasis requires tremendous mental effort.
I crouch motionless like a giant monkey trapped in a botanical garden, my gaze fixed intently on a small patch of sky revealed through a crack in the roof that had accidentally opened.
A thin ray of light seeps through the gaps between the loose iron plates. In that piece, the world, not as a symbol, but as the world itself, is contained entirely.
--- p.39

Your brilliance, your hesitations, the sharpness of your thoughts, your courage and your tenderness, your hobbies of skiing and astrophysics, your love of children, the way you talked, the way your heart was moved, agitated, silent, asleep, the way you laughed, the pitch of your laughter, the way you touched my fingertips with yours, the way you were shy, unhappy, clumsy or dignified, the way you loved, loved, I could never finish this list… … The only place I can gather what I know is in writing.
--- p.50

I keep going down.
I glide between the full and the empty, reaching your secret name.
I see the water flowing beneath it, sparkling as if reviving the light that had been lost in the shadows of the night.
I go down, and down again, to a more concrete place, to a more transparent place.
The day is dawning.
I advance into the freshness of the upside-down sky, I continue to advance, I throw myself into the light of the firmament.

--- p.76