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Marie Chaix (née Beugras; 3 February 1942) is a French writer. She has written memoirs and a book about the singer Barbara. Her memoirs are about her mother and father as well as her life. Her book The Laurels of Lake Constance won the Prix Maison de la Presse in 1974.
Chaix only knew that her father had something to do with politics as a child, but she was unaware that he was the right-hand man of fascist leader Jacques Doriot. She thought of her childhood as being happy and normal despite her oldest brother going missing in action in Germany and her father being imprisoned from 1946 to 1954. Her father died in 1963 without his actions ever being discussed within his family. When she was 26 years old, Chaix became aware of her father's activities when she was given his notebooks to read by her mother, who asked Chaix to not tell anyone about its contents.
Chaix's next book was a memoir about her mother titled Silences, or a Woman’s Life. One of Chaix's novels was rejected by Éditions du Seuil and the publisher did not allow her to rewrite it because they believed that she could only write autobiographies. In 1986, Alain Oulman became Chaix's editor for a book about the singer Barbara and Chaix thought of him as being "closer than a lover". Oulman died in 1990, a month after the book was published, which caused Chaix to not write for a decade. Her book The Summer of the Elder Tree was published by Dalkey Archive Press and translated by her later husband Harry Mathews. The Summer of the Elder Tree is about Chaix's decade-long break from writing and the places that she went to while writing The Laurels of Lake Constance, including an island that her father and brother were at during World War II.
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