« Les enfants, c’est comme les adultes. Il n’y a rien à comprendre »

Louise’s remark that children are no more comprehensible than adults answers Myriam’s bewilderment with a refusal of easy explanation. It is a compact expression of the novel’s insistence that children’s behavior, like adults’, cannot always be made legible by the people closest to them.

The Expression in Context

Myriam has just suggested that Mila is jealous of her brother and reassured Louise that she will handle the situation. Myriam agrees, but admits that she still does not understand. Louise replies that there is no need to seek to understand everything: children are like adults, and there is nothing to understand. The statement neither confirms Myriam’s explanation nor offers another; it sets a limit on what explanation can accomplish.

Meaning and Tension

The comparison briefly places children and adults on equal terms. Rather than treating a child’s conduct as a puzzle with a discoverable answer, Louise presents opacity as something shared across ages. The line can sound like practical counsel to a worried mother, but its blunt finality also leaves Myriam’s concern unresolved. Its force lies in that tension: it closes off the demand for a complete explanation without showing that the underlying difficulty has passed.

Narrative Significance

The exchange immediately precedes Myriam’s recollection of Louise’s reaction to the family’s planned week away at Paul’s parents’ mountain home. Louise had looked dark and stormy, then left without saying goodbye to the children; Mila and Adam told their mother that Louise had disappeared. Days later, as the family prepared to leave, Louise watched Myriam laughing with her mother-in-law, Sylvie, from the kitchen. Myriam noticed Louise’s pallor and sunken, dark-circled eyes, but when she approached, Louise crouched to close a suitcase, and Myriam later wondered whether she had imagined what she saw. Set beside these moments of departure, disappearance, and uncertain observation, Louise’s maxim resonates beyond its immediate reassurance: people remain difficult to read even when their behavior appears to invite interpretation.