In “Saute-ruisseau,” Pierrette Frochaux recounts a life lived among books

Faustine is six years old when she is sent from the city to spend the summer on a farm. In Pierrette Frochaux’s “Saute-ruisseau,” the countryside becomes both a place of discovery and a landscape shaped by longing for her mother.

The story takes place in Switzerland in the 1950s, a country spared the war but still poor. Holidays abroad are not part of ordinary life. Faustine is fortunate to find a kind farm woman, and village life offers a stream of surprises.

Frochaux recalls the pleasures of the garden, sliding through hay and tumbling into a grain silo. But the book does not turn childhood into an idyll. When Faustine puts herself in danger or gets hurt, adults discipline her with a spanking. The child also experiences anxiety when the adults’ “raw sexuality” intrudes directly into her world.

Reading runs through the account of a life lived between books, from the Switzerland of the 1950s to the present. Frochaux, who worked as a bookseller and archivist, is presenting the book in Lausanne on Thursday at the Forum de l’Hôtel de Ville, as part of an exhibition marking the 50th anniversary of Editions d’en bas.