Décolorer sa fille, by Lucie Bérard

First novel by Lucie Bérard (2026), Éditions Les Intranquilles, 254 pages.

Paula is bored out of her mind by the sea. After her grandmother’s death, she ditched everything with her boyfriend and moved into a flat with a blocked sink and a mold-stained ceiling. A fresh start that looked promising, though: a new job at a beauty salon facing the beach was hers for the taking. She won’t go. She wanders the streets with her dog, meets a woman in a dubious coat, thinks back on the women of her family, on the ritual her mother and sister shared, their bleaching, their chemical blondness, obsessively scrubs her flat and sinks ever deeper into her memories, dreaming of the red hair of women passing by.

A complex heroine with a scathing eye.