Otherwise I Forget : A Novel by Clémentine Mélois (World Writing in French: New Archipelagoes)

Clémentine Mélois is a writer, artist, and member of Oulipo. Her first published work, Cent titres (2014), is a cult classic. She has gone on to subvert children’s literature and – more recently – the photo-story genre. Sinon j’oublie (2017) – Otherwise I Forget – is a unique work embroidered around a selection of her collection of ‘found’ shopping lists. After a short foreword – exposing her interest in this universal but throw-away form of writing – we find images of 100 shopping lists accompanied by her imagined insight into the lives and minds of their authors. The result is a delightful panoramic view of contemporary France in the guise of an (autobiographical) novel. This is the first of her works to be translated for an Anglophone readership. More accessible than other of her works, universal in appeal, and full of humanity, Otherwise I Forget is a wonderful and deceptively simple introduction to the work of this highly original writer and artist.