Remembering Pregnancy Loss in Camille Laurens’s Philippe

Writings that capture a woman’s perspective of perinatal death are remarkably rare in French literature. This paper explores the narrative techniques and formal experimentation that Camille Laurens’s Philippe employs to give voice to both mother and child. It beautifully chronicles the traumatic event and aftermath, disentangling the female reproductive body from the medical institution’s web of blame and valuing its experience, while creating a narrative of life for Philippe, an enfant sans vie. Ultimately, the narrator’s painstaking compilation of traces of her son begins to delicately articulate the loss experienced by the mourning mother/writer, counteracting the silence surrounding perinatal death.