Vivre ensemble

How to live in a family you haven't chosen? A poignant story of a stepfamily in a Paris under fire from terrorist attacks.

Autumn 2015, Pierre and Deborah are in love and wandering through the streets of Paris one evening when a terrorist commando appears from nowhere and sweeps café terraces with machinegun fire.
By sheer luck, neither of them is injured, but the event propels them into a state of emotional crisis that urges them not to waste more of their lives, and to make the most of what they have, starting with their budding relationship. So they decide to live together along with their respective sons, 13-year-old Leo and 11-year-old Salomon.
In their enthusiasm, the couple forget that these two boys did not choose to be together. Nor did they choose their stepparents, and these stepparents cannot say anything about each other's sons.
Between them, they explore the difficulties of building something together, and accepting other people's differences... and Salomon is appreciably "different" a precocious child who constantly threatens the fragile stability of this emerging family structure. So now Deborah worries about outbreaks of violence not only in the Métro or on café terraces, but also in her own home, aware that, both inside and out, everything could go up in flames at any minutes...

Émilie Frèche est romancière. Elle est l’auteur, entre autres, de Deux étrangers (prix Orange 2013 et prix des lycéens d’Île-de-France 2013).