Title: Cavalcade - Bruno de Stabenrath - book
Summary :
A romantic revelation as much as a human adventure, "Cavalcade" is a text on a knife edge, bringing together laughter and tragedy, accurately evoking a universe where the only measure is nevertheless excess.
"Cavalcade" is the story of Poisson Chat, a young man blessed by fate until the day when an unfortunate turn of the wheel sends him more dead than alive to the hospital in Garches. He spends fourteen months there being resurrected and learning to accept the idea that, barring a miracle, he is a quadriplegic for life. Bruno de Stabenrath does not offer here the edifying tale of a quadriplegic who manages to live with his disability, but the moving journey of a young man who becomes himself again and gradually rediscovers the soul and spirit of the man he was before his accident. "Cavalcade" is also a season in hell within the walls of a hospital for the severely disabled, powerfully rendered, rich in hallucinatory scenes: nightmares under morphine; gang of "scissors", these thugs in wheelchairs who slash the numb ankles of the sick; but also an impromptu visit, in the middle of a medically assisted ejaculation session, from a bourgeois girlfriend to her fingertips, friendly enough to end up in Poisson Chat's bed. Bruno de Stabenrath rightly refuses to be confined to what he calls "Tetra-Literature". Certainly there are common points between the hero of "Cavalcade" and its author, but by taking liberties with a story that sticks to his skin, Bruno de Stabenrath does not act differently from most novelists. Author of songs, screenplays and even two (unpublished) novels, he is not a novice in writing and likes to say that his accident simply provided him with an obvious subject.
