Toutes les vies, by Rebeka Warrior

First book by Rebeka Warrior (2025), Éditions Stock, 286 pages.

Nothing prepares you for the illness or the death of the person you love. There is no predicting how we will react, whether we will stand by them or desert them. What we are able to endure on the threshold of nothingness.

The author looks back on her whirlwind love story with Pauline. Life at full speed, the fusion of bodies and hearts. And then the lump discovered on vacation, to which they pay no particular attention at the time. Their carefree days. A month, a speck in a lifetime.

Back in Paris, the couple’s hopes are dashed. The cancer has set in. Emergency protocol. Hardcore treatments. Chemo. What it does to the bodies of the one who is ill and of the one who cares for her. The unbearable metamorphosis. Love in spite of everything, against all odds. The pain. Immense. The helplessness.

A story of rare intensity, an uncompromising laying bare that hides nothing of the descent into hell, the wanderings and the acts of cowardice. It is also a story full of light, a quest: to find Pauline again after her death, by whatever means. Meditation, dr*gs, writing. The overwhelming need to commune. To be guided. Love and friendship along the way, never far.

A moving text, difficult but necessary.