'La Maison', by Marie Klimis
This Guest Post was written by Marie Klimis, author of La Maison.
La Maison – The House, in French – is a new novel by Belgian writer Marie Klimis. Marie has been living in London for six years, and the homeland of Lewis Caroll has inspired her to create this surreal, magical story where artists travel in flying machines, paintings talk to giant sheep and chocolate make people lose their mind.
The story is told by the house itself, which experiences the feelings of the numerous characters that live inside: water pipes explode when people are heartbroken, walls are trembling when a character throws a tantrum and passion makes its temperature rise inexorably in the middle of a blistering winter.
It would be really difficult to explain what La Maison is actually about. The author is passionate about storytelling, from ancient tales such as the Arabian Nights to modern fiction like One hundred years of solitude. As a result, the house is full of stories starring countless characters, from magical cooks to public writers, travelling pedlars, contemporary artists, flying engineers and armies of ducks. Children paint ceilings, sheep dig tunnels, pianos burst into flames, crowds dance underground, dukes talk to vegetables, and in the middle of all that madness, people fall in love.
It is whimsical storytelling for adults, sometimes sweet, sometimes dark, a book for people who wish the world could be a bit less serious.
About the author: Marie Klimis was born in Brussels in 1983, from a Belgian mother and a Greek father. She graduated from a business school in Belgium and then moved to London in 2006, where she has been working as an event programmer for various festivals and art organisations. She is now doing an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice at Central School of Speech and Drama. La Maison is her first novel.