Je ne suis pas seul à être seul

The first memory of loneliness? A little boy with a brushed hairdo calling for his mother at the reception desk of a department store.
Later, it's a 10-year-old child who swims alone in the North Sea and who, when he turns around, discovers the empty beach: no one has been waiting for him. Then it's the first refused dance, the first breakup, the first bereavement, but it's also all those moments chosen, desired, hoped for, tasted: alone with a book, with music, alone watching others, alone in writing. Jean-Louis Fournier is still that little boy, an only son who dreamed of friendships and a big family but who also hoped to escape, grow up, be alone.
Today in a large apartment, after the death of his wife, his friends, his editor, this desire for others and this need for solitude have remained the same and he passes from one to the other. With a mixture of sweetness, sadness and playfulness, he looks at the always closed windows of his neighbors (lonely people like him?), he observes this world where men are ultra-connected and seem to have never been so alone , he awaits the visit of a young woman who takes him to the museum, who distracts him, brings him his youth: but of the two who is the most alone?
A tender, delicate, sometimes melancholy book that resembles a watercolor by Turner and a drawing by Sempé.