Forgotten on Sunday

 

Forgotten on Sunday / Valérie Perrin
trans. from the French by Hildegarde Searle
NY: Europa, 2025, c2015.
304 p.

I've taken a bit of time away from blogging after my August Women in Translation rush! But that doesn't mean I am done reviewing, oh no. I still have a couple of translated books to share with you, and then a whole bunch of contemporary reads, mid-century reads, Ukrainian reads, and more. 

But today I'll share the French novel that I finished just as August was wrapping up. Forgotten on Sunday is Valerie Perrin's first novel, although not the first to be translated into English. Her second novel Fresh Water for Flowers was the first English offering, and was a huge hit. I liked it but found it a bit melodramatic. This novel was more to my taste, even though it also had some melodrama/soapy elements. 

Justine and her cousin Jules have lived with their grandparents since they were children, when both of their sets of parents were killed in a car accident. Justine cares for her grandparents in many ways, and takes care of Jules too, secretly putting aside money from her own savings to get him to university in the city. 

She is working in a seniors home as a care aide, where she spends lots of unpaid time listening to residents' stories. The book moves between Justine's own life, in which she is trying to figure out the truth behind her parents' death, and the life story of Helene Hel, a resident who is often on the beach with her husband in her memories. 

Add to that Helene's handsome grandson, some mysterious calls to family members of residents telling them their relative has died (which is the only way to get some of them to turn up for a visit), Justine's sometime lover 'What's-His-Name', and her cranky grandparents' back story, and you get a lot of narrative threads woven in here. 

Justine is tough, she is self-contained, she is slow to trust, but she ends up with a sense of possibility for the future despite everything she is dealing with. Helene's story illuminates France prior to and during WWII, and there are the elements you might expect with that time frame. Helene was a seamstress, and this is an integral part of the story, one part that I really liked. But she had a hard life, and her story perfectly locks in with Justine's contemporary one. I found the balance well done, with both characters and both lives making for compelling reading. As noted, the plot can get a little soapy, but I still thought that it was a great read that had some strong characters to carry the story. Lots of different elements to interest and engage a variety of readers. I'm glad I picked this one up.

All the World's a Mall

All the World's a Mall / Rinny Gremaud
trans. from the French by Luise von Flotow
Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2023, c2018.
152 p.

I picked up this slim book at my library, thinking it was an interesting premise -- the author travels to five cities, Edmonton, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and Casablanca, to visit five of the largest malls in the world. 

I was intrigued by the inclusion of the West Edmonton Mall, since I have been there myself.  That is mainly why I wanted to read it. The book began in Edmonton & I enjoyed seeing her explore places I recognized. 

The concept is that these malls are almost like cities into themselves, but she finds that they are sterile, centered on commerce & transactional relationships, lacking any real sense of life. I think that is a common response to megamalls.

She pushes herself to rapidly visit these five shopping centres, interviewing shop owners and executives. Interspersed with this, she talks about her own life & family, how tired she is, how much she misses them. 

Even though this is a short book, it felt repetitive by the end. The malls are indeed all very much alike & that sameness means she doesn't have a lot to add by the fifth one. Also, having her conclusion laid out in the first chapter means that there isn't too much discovery going on. It just felt depressing by halfway through, with the reader wondering why she was bothering to complete this project.  

So while there were some good points, especially in the first half, I did feel like the book kind of petered out. Perhaps it would have been more effective as a magazine article in a condensed form. 

The Goldberg Variations

The Goldberg Variations / Nancy Huston
trans. from the French by Nancy Huston
Signature, c1981.
160 p.

I've read a number of Nancy Huston's books; this is one that she wrote first in French and translated into English herself; there are a few in her oeuvre that were written this way. 

It's organized around the structure of Bach's Goldberg Variations, 30 chapters focusing on the different characters, who are revealed through their thoughts as they listen to the piece of music. Each chapter is a monologue of sorts, with each person connected somehow to the performer.

The book begins and ends with Liliane Kulainn, the harpichordist giving a performance of the Goldberg Variations in her Paris apartment, to a select invited group.

All the people at this house concert are her ex-lovers, old friends or colleagues, or people who have come with them. As we enter each character's thoughts, there are revelations -- some specifically about Liliane but some with people's minds wandering, thinking about their own lives. 

As the focus changes between characters, the voices do too. Some of them are almost a different dialect, while others reveal class or regional differences. It's an interesting concept & it mostly works. It opens up space for many stories, and makes this a book you can read chapter by chapter without losing the plot.  That said, there isn't much of an actual plot, it's more of a character study. But one that keeps you reading. 

I did find that with so many characters, and all revealed through interior monologues, it was a slower paced read. Not a lot of emotional connection; but quite a bit of technical, stylistic flair. Maybe like the Goldberg Variations themselves, especially in the hands of Glenn Gould. I admired this novel, but it's probably not one I would read again. 

 

Invisible Man at the Window

Invisible Man at the Window / Monique Proulx
trans. from the French by Matt Cohen
Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1995, c1993.
185 p.

I picked this book up at a secondhand shop, as soon as I saw it - I like Monique Proulx's writing but had never seen this one before. It was a fascinating read, a bit unusual and slow to get going, but definitely worth it. 

Max is an artist, living in a run-down apartment building in Montreal. He is inundated with artistic friends, young and old, all emotionally needy and seemingly dependent on Max, who serves as a kind of confessor, and his place is a bit of a flophouse too. People are coming and going, bringing Max news of their worlds as they navigate all sorts of ups and downs, mostly related to love and passion and jealousy and relationships of all kinds. 

Max uses a wheelchair, having experienced a car accident years before. And somehow this makes him into a saint that everyone depends on, although he is not mild or saintly at all. The story is told in a series of  "portraits" of the characters, narrated by Max. And they are all so messed up, so hapless, and Max so very cynical that it feels a bit heavy - where is this going? 

But it is going somewhere, and it's worth sticking with this story. About 3/4 of the way through, Max has a sudden epiphany, an experience that breaks his curmudgeonly self open, and it's beautiful. Then everything starts moving and all the characters come together, the ties between them become clear, and the mysteries of Max's past are revealed. 

The lives of bohemian Montrealers, the meaning of art, questions of belonging and family and love -- they all come together in a fascinating story. Many of the characters are a little unlikeable or prickly or so passive, but somehow this ensemble works and the flawed circle of friends ends up being engaging and memorable. If you have lived in Montreal you'll enjoy the references to places but this is really Max's story and he is the heart of everything - the rest of the details are just icing on the top. I'm glad I discovered this one! 

Medusa by Martine Desjardins

 

Medusa / Martine Desjardins
trans. from the French by Oana Avasilchioaei
Vancouver, BC: Talon Books, 2022, c2020.
208 p.

This is another story of a girl with unusual powers, but this time it's the power to kill men just by looking them in the eyes. It's written by Martine Desjardins, a Quebecois writer I really like; I've read all of her work which has been translated into English so far. 

Some I've liked more than others; this is one of the darker ones. They are all slightly off-kilter, which is what I appreciate about her work. In this one, our main character is a rejected daughter, the youngest of three, who has been called Medusa for so long she can't recall what her actual name is. Her family keeps her locked away, where she never looks up beyond her veil of hair -- her oracular deformities can kill. 

And then her family decides to commit her to the Atheneum, an Institute for young girls with various "malformations" -- an isolated institution on the shores of a deep lake filled with jellyfish. Medusa is so terrifying, however, that she doesn't even become a student, instead being assigned to housekeeping. She is clever, though, and befriends other students even while the school's Benefactors play their twisted games with the girls. 

There is plenty of misogyny and body shame going on in this book, with women's bodies pathologized and most of the men ridiculous and petty. Medusa hasn't even seen her own eyes, being too terrifying to examine. But when she runs away and meets a minor crook who takes her in and isn't afraid of her at all, she begins to feel more agency over her own life and body. And we finally find out what exactly the nature of her oracular abominations is. 

The language in this book is elaborate, intricate, almost Victorian but in a macabre way. We have a very eloquent narrator, who describes her surroundings and the quirks of those around her frankly, sparing no-one. It's a strange story, with ornate cruelties and everyday sadism. But if you like this style of dark gothic with feminist overtones, written in curliqued prose, you'll definitely want to give this a go! 

I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men / Jacqueline Harpman
trans. from the French by Ros Schwartz
Transit Books, 2022, c1995.
175 p.

It seems like everyone is reading this book right now! It is an unusual read, a dystopia that is vague and horrifying because of this very looseness of detail. 

There are 39 women and one young girl in a cage underground. They are being kept prisoner for an unknown reason, with armed male guards who don't speak to them. The women remember a life before, but can't quite recall why they were imprisoned or how exactly it happened. The young girl remembers only this life. 

But one day, chance offers the opportunity for the women to escape, and they do -- into a bleak and unfamiliar world above. It's never clear where it is: a damaged Earth, or another planet altogether. Why they are imprisoned, when and how it happened, that's not clear either. Nothing is really explained. And so we are in the same predicament as our narrator, the young girl who only knows this world. 

It's a bleak story of survival, as the group of women wanders the surface for many years, discovering other underground bunkers but no further survivors. And being so much younger than all the other women, our narrator eventually finds herself alone and wandering this landscape, finding out small things that may help to explain her life. She ends up in another bunker, this one very different from where she started. It is luxurious, she stays there. But the last line of this book will shake you. 

It's a read that you have to be ready to go into knowing there will be no explanations, no neat conclusions. But there will be atmosphere galore, and deep questions of meaning and relationship and existence. This book has haunted me since I finished it. Dare you to read it too! 

The Future

The Future / Catherine Leroux
trans. from the French by Susan Ouriou
Windsor, ON : Biblioasis, c2023.
309 p.

The Future, which I read about a month ago, has just won this year's Canada Reads competition. I didn't think it would -- translations aren't always the most popular choices for things like Canada Reads. But it did, and I'm happy with that result. 

It's a dystopia of sorts; more of an exaggerated and hyperextended vision of the decline of civilization. This one's set in an alternate Detroit which was never surrendered to the Americans, and boasts a French community. Which also houses a wild band of ragged, self-governing children. I felt like this was a mix between Lord of the Flies and Peter Pan's Lost Boys, with a bit of Station Eleven mixed in for good measure. And perhaps tinges of Nalo Hopkinson's Brown Girl in the Ring as well. 

There are many, many characters to follow. We start with Gloria, who moves into the house where her daughter was recently murdered, looking for answers, and for her two missing granddaughters. She builds a friendship with the woman next door, and once Gloria encounters the band of children in the deep woods of a local park, they both try to build a tentative connection with the children. Gloria is sure that there is a link to her granddaughters somewhere among these children (and as it turns out she is right). 

There are houses that regenerate from ruins, community gardens built by a stubborn old gardener and his cohort of associates, wild children in various conclaves, poisoned rivers, hit and run tourism, and many more peculiar and unsettling elements to the story. It's a ride. You just have to let yourself sink in and follow the story as it goes. I'm not sure that there is a strong conclusion but there is a sense of hope as some of these children see a new future in cooperation with the adults who work to care for them. The world here is rather vaguely proposed so it's uncertain to me what will come after the end of the book, but there is a strong sense of communities helping themselves. 

I actually liked it much more than Leroux's first book which I read quite a while ago now, The Party Wall. I'm glad to have had the chance to try another book by this author. And I guess many Canadians will be reading it also, thanks to the Canada Reads effect. I hope it finds its audience!

Social Fiction: a graphic novel

 

Social Fiction / Chantal Montellier
trans. from the French by Geoffrey Brock
NY: NYRB, c2023.
191 p.

This was a chance discovery from the new books arriving at my library. It's a collection of 3 graphic novels written by French writer/artist Chantal Montellier: Wonder City, Shelter, and 1996. It also includes an introduction by the translator, and a short interview with Montellier at the end. 

Montellier is a feminist and a woman who made her way in the very male world of French comics in the 70s and 80s. She's tough, and you can tell. All three of the stories here are futuristic and dark, and the drawing style is stark, in black and white, naturalistic. Wonder City has pink accents, which works with the story, but the others are monochromatic. 

I found these stories a little shocking, hard-hitting at times, a bit twisted, in the best ways of course. I think Shelter was the one that was most unsettling to me personally, but each of them has something to say about rich and poor, about totalitarian instincts, about herd mentality, and societal structures. The characters don't necessarily fight fascism or government control, they are mostly subsumed by it. 

I hadn't heard of this author previously, and so found the intro helpful to place her in context, alongside the brief interview at the conclusion. This is an activist who is writing her imagined futures, in a chilling way. I had no expectations at all going in to this, and so was able to experience these all new and fresh to me. Wow, it was a reading experience. Definitely recommended if you'd like to see the visions of a future coming to us from a prescient writer of the 70s and 80s. 

I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere

 

I Wish Someone Were Waiting for Me Somewhere / Anna Gavalda
trans. from the French by Karen L. Marker
NY: Riverhead, 2003, c1999.
193 p.

I picked up this slim collection of short stories from my own bookshelves this week, and was able to read it pretty much straight through. Anna Gavalda's style is fast moving and engaging, with a casual style and language choices. 

There are 12 stories in this book, many of them dealing with love and romantic longings in one way or another. Either the lack of such, or the beginnings of romance. But they aren't really about love as much as loneliness, belonging, or meaning. The stories are similar but have some notable differences -- from one in the second person to the closing story, which is about a writer who can't get published, and the character mentions her time spent writing the previous story in this collection, Clic-Clac. Very meta, but still entertaining. 

There are a couple of stories that turn dark, not in a gory way but in a very sad and terrible way, as with 'Lead Story', in which a travelling salesman finds out the consequences of his bad driving the next morning. Or 'Pregnant', about a woman experiencing pregnancy loss. It's not all light in this book.

But it was a great read, I appreciated encountering this narrative voice; there was enough variety to keep me reading, and some strong and memorable characters. It's one of her older books, and I think I may pick up some of her more recent writing to check out now.

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep

And Miles to Go Before I Sleep / Jocelyne Saucier
trans. from the French by Rhonda Mullins
TO: Coach House Books, 2021.
208 p.

This is another translation from a Quebec author that I kind of liked but also found dragged on a bit. It's an interesting concept: Gladys, at the end of her life, hops a train to leave her village of Swastika and her troubled daughter Lisana, returning to the constant train travel of her childhood -- her father was a travelling schoolteacher across Northern Quebec and her family lived on the train. 

The narrator of this book is a man who is tracking down family and friends of Gladys, as well as anyone who might have seen her on a train, to figure out what happened and why. We learn a lot about Gladys' youth, her life in the weirdly named village and her long-term care of her problematic daughter. We also catch glimpses of why she might have just picked up and left with no notice; there are shades of what she might have been looking for as she searched for a last chance at freedom. 

I found a lot of this interesting; Gladys herself, her past, the idea of train travel as a kind of metaphor for freedom. But I also found the story dragged, like a long train trip that you eventually get tired of and just want to end already. The narrator character wasn't compelling to me, and it was like that conceit just added another layer  of distance between the reader and Gladys' motivations and experiences. It was a lot of telling, and at times the story moves away from Gladys to other elements, which felt tacked on to me, as well. 

So overall, despite the potential I was a bit bored by this book. I wanted to finish it to see if we figured out what had motivated Gladys and how her life ended, but did skim through the last third just to find that out. I might try another book by this author in future though, to see if it catches me a bit more. 

Some Maintenance Required

 

Some Maintenance Required / Marie-Renée Lavoie
Toronto: Anansi, 2022, c2018.
272 p.

I greatly enjoyed Lavoie's two books about a "boring wife" in the past, so when this one arrived in my library recently I snapped it up. It's a standalone, and less slapstick than the previous series. But while it's a more serious look at work, coming of age, and family dynamics, it also has its share of humour. 

It's 1993 and Laurie is at that age where she has to decide what to do with her life. She's attending college but also working , first at a bakery, then a restaurant (her job interview there is quite amusing), and a bingo hall. Her mother works as a parking lot attendant and has made her tiny booth homey. Her father is a mechanic and she visits him at his shop, where she disapproves of the sexist calendars hung up, and where she meets a young man from the rich part of town and a romance slowly begins, giving Laurie a glimpse of a different kind of life.

Laurie also looks after her young neighbour, a scraggly, neglected child who really needs the stable influence of Laurie's family. While her mother is the backbone of the family there comes a point when she is the one needing "some maintenance". The story shows how everyone needs support in life, and how challenges arise that can be met with the help of others. Despite this, nothing feels sappy or sentimental here, it's rough, emotional taxing at times, but ultimately hopeful. 

I enjoyed the sarcasm and some of the set pieces in this story; they made me laugh but also touched me. And I don't think I've read anything lately that engages with work in the way that this book does. The characters spend a lot of their time at work, as people do, and that work defines them and shapes their experiences. I recognized some aspects of Laurie's jobs in the restaurant business from my own few years working in a deli, at about the same stage of life as she's in - it feels unusual to have jobs be a part of a novel in this way. So often a character just floats along and does stuff that isn't affected by income or job schedules. This book feels very life-like in its everyday acceptance that work  - and the finding of work - is a major part of life. I love that it also highlighted how work experiences can also be hilarious at times. 

But the characters are the key here, and this family was the heart of the book. Everything flowed from the relationships between all three of them. I really liked this one, and look forward to more by Lavoie.

Manikanetish

Manikanetish / Naomi Fontaine
trans. from the French by 
TO: Arachnide, c2021.
153 p.

This is a small story about Yammie, an Innu woman who left her community on Quebec's North Shore, and has now returned as a teacher. She has a classroom full of rather disaffected students; they see no future for themselves and are not engaged in learning the French language that she is responsible for teaching. 

This small story moves between Yammie's own experiences both in her childhood and with her current French boyfriend still living in Quebec City and getting impatient with her decision to teach Up North, away from him. That's rolled into the lives of these students that she is beginning to care for, in regard to both their schooling and the issues in their lives. 

Yammie decides that her class will put on a French play, to liven things up and give them a different way to approach French and learning in general. This seems to spark something and the class, even some of the most antagonistic boys, get into it and want to be involved. It brings out new characteristics in some of the students, even while it's not enough to change to fates of others. 

In some ways, this brief and bittersweet book reminds me of Gabrielle Roy and her novels and stories about young teachers in one-room schoolrooms across the prairies. It has the same sense of a young teacher feeling their way with students not too much younger than they are, and becoming a part of the students lives in unexpected ways. The language is also laden with that odd sense of nostalgia that can be found in Roy's writing; in this novel Yammie is telling her story in the present tense, but it feels like she's looking back at it and drawing out the poignancy of her time at the school. 

It's an unusual book, sharing the daily life of a community that isn't represented a lot, and it is told by an author who is a member of the Innu nation. It's one that is worth reading, to get a perspective on a life and a community that can be overlooked in Canadian literature. 

 

Inseparable

Inseperable / Simone de Beauvoir
trans. from the French by Sandra Smith
NY: Echo, c2021
208 p.

This is a book first written in 1954, but left in Simone de Beauvoir's papers until it was published in 2021. It is a semi-autobiographical story about Simone de Beauvoir (Sylvie) and her 'inseparable' friend, Elisabeth ‘Zaza‘ Lacoin (Andrée).

Sylvie is telling the story; she is from a poorer, smaller French family, but her best friend Andrée comes from a large, traditional French family, heavily Catholic and very focused on social expectations. The narrative covers the time between their first meeting at nine years old, into adolescence, and the differing expectations on them as they grow older, until it stops short in 1929. 

These two friends fight against the expectations for women at that time and place; but Sylvie is much freer to do so; Andrée is bound up in her large family, never left alone and forced to hide her thoughts and feelings in order to meet her mother's demands and learn the social milieu she's expected to continue living in forever. It's tortuous. And as they get older, Andrée's mother also tries to wedge some distance between the two girls, as the more liberal Sylvie is not considered a good influence (or a useful connection, for that matter). Andrée's burgeoning relationship with the boy next door is also crushed out, since he is half-Jewish and thus not suitable in her family's eyes. 

It's a small book, told in dreamy French, with a feeling of the hazy past hanging over a lot of it. It's based on a real friendship that de Beauvoir had, and you can feel how much this relationship haunted her, how much she needed to write it out. It gives a solid sense of what it was like to live in this milieu, the social rules that constricted any personal choices, and the weight of family in shaping a life. It is a snapshot, but one that stays with you for a long time. 

The Lost Manuscript

The Lost Manuscript / Cathy Bonidan
NY: St. Martins, 2021, c2019.
274 p.

This is a title that I heard of thanks to WIT Month in a previous year. I thought it sounded charming, and it's in epistolary format, which is something I really love. So I found it via my library and gave it a go. 

Unfortunately, I wanted to like it much more than I ended up doing. It is told in a series of letters back and forth between a widening group of writers. Anna-Lise Briard finds an old manuscript in a hotel side table, and reads it; it touches her so much she tries to find out who left it there, and then trace that line back to who might have written it. 

Letters fly back and forth across France and into England as people are introduced to each other through their connection to the manuscript. Anne-Lise seems like a nosy person with a lot of time on her hands, despite working for a publisher full-time. Her actions drive the story, though, and without her busybody interventions there would be no book ;) 

Anyhow, I liked the idea, and some of the letters were amusing - the differing tones in letters between new acquaintances and old friends was nicely done. The epistolary format was used effectively, with the different ways in which people write to one another used appropriately to develop the story. 

There was a romantic arc between Anna-Lise's friend Maggy and an English character, but it was kind of ho-hum -- and that was my problem with this book in the end. I did find the plot to be a little weak and overly sentimental. By the end I didn't really care who wrote the manuscript or why, and felt like it was very unlikely to have changed the life of everyone who had ever laid eyes on it. So if you're in the mood for something really light with loads of sentiment this might hit the spot, but it just didn't gel for me at this moment. 

A Single Rose

A Single Rose / Muriel Barbery
trans. from the French by Alison Anderson
NY: Europa Editions, 2021.
148 p.

Muriel Barbery shot to fame with her novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which had hints in it of Barbery's fascination with Japan. But this book goes all out into that fascination.

It features Rose, a French woman, just turned 40, who is summoned to Kyoto when her father dies; she has never met her father, a Japanese art dealer. But he wanted her to be there for the reading of his will. 

She arrives in Kyoto, where she stays in her father's house and is waited on by a Japanese housekeeper and a chauffeur, and is toured around Kyoto to various temples and restaurants in the week leading up to the will reading. Her tour guide is Paul, a Belgian widower who has lived in Kyoto for 20 years and worked as her father's assistant. You can see where this is going from a mile away. 

Most of the book is about Rose's experiences of transcendence and self-discovery through her many trips to temples and their gardens. She's a botanist so should be enthused by flowers but she's hard to like; she's as prickly as her name, and never really becomes much more engaging. I found her obstinate behaviour quite child-like, more suited to a 20-something than a supposed 40 year old woman. And in response to many things -- her sudden attraction to Paul, her feelings of being abandoned/neglected by her father and her mother alike, etc -- she gets truculent, angry, or decides to get drunk. 

I found her really whiny and her sudden reversal at the end a bit too convenient. The ending itself is a bit of an anticlimax; the book is more interested in the twisty, poetic use of language (slightly purple at times) than plot. I liked parts of it (and certainly would love to go to Kyoto) but found it slightly too mystical for my tastes, and did feel that the Western person in esoteric Japan narrative was a bit cliche. I'm not actually sure what I really feel about this one yet! Maybe I'll have to think about it for a few more days to get a handle on my reading experience. 

The Mad Women's Ball

The Mad Women's Ball / Victoria Mas
trans. from the French by Frank Wynne
NY: Abrams, 2021, c2019.
224 p.

The system of asylums that took care of the problem of women who didn't want to fit into their family expectations existed in France as well as England and other countries too. Victoria Mas has created a novel full of dread and powerlessness and also the voices of the dead. 

Genevieve is a nurse at the Salpetriere Asylum in Paris, 1885. After her sister Blandine died young, she gave up religious beliefs and turned to science. She's a no-nonense nurse and guardian to the mad women in the asylum. 

However, as usual in this era, many of the women at the asylum are simply poor, unwanted, or troublesome wives or daughters who are being conveniently disposed of. One of these is Eugenie, a 19 year old daughter of the bourgeoisie who has been committed after telling her family that she can communicate with spirits. The fact is, however, that she can. 

Eugenie begins to pass messages on to Genevieve from Blandine, shaking Genevieve's worldview. And slowly she is won over to Eugenie's plans to escape the asylum, and agrees to help her. 

The book is told in a dreamy fashion, highlighting the era and the varied women in the asylum. My impression of the book is of a dusty, sunlight room full of women imprisoned and dispirited. The big moment of the year is the titular Mad Women's Ball, at which society attends a large party and views all the mad women decked out in finery for one night of the year. The fuss this causes seems like the perfect moment to plan an escape. But is the crowd a help or hindrance in this plan? 

This novel has a quiet air, a historical aura that makes it feel like a sliver of the past. It reminds me of a few French Canadian novels that I've read in tone and pacing -- particularly those of Dominique Fortier.  It's a fascinating premise and I think works well. The style is sparse, not overly packed with detail, so you have space to imagine and make your own decisions about spirits and asylums and who is acting in good faith or not. 

There's also been a movie made from this book, although I think it's only available via Amazon Prime so if you have access to that you'll have to tell me how good it was ;) 

I liked this one -- picked it up only because it came across the desk at work and that cover caught my eye. But recommended if you're in the mood for a slower paced historical novel examining women's lives in 19th century Paris. 

List of My Desires

The List of My Desires / Grégoire Delacourt
trans. from the French by Anthea Bell
London : Phoenix, 2014, c2013.
214 p.

Jocelyne is 47, slightly overweight, in a dull long-term marriage, and works at a dressmaking shop. She's also just started a sewing blog, and has been convinced by her best friends (twins who run a hairdressing shop) to buy a lotto ticket, for the very first time. And then she wins 18 million Euros.

She is so shocked that she doesn't tell anyone, just hides the cheque in a shoe and starts to wonder what to do with it. She doesn't want this to disrupt her placid life of small desires, even if it isn't that great. She's worried that having so much money will change everything; even the lawyers she met in Paris to pick up her cheque have warned her that sudden wealth can be dangerous. 

Jocelyne had to give up her dreams at 17, when her mother died, and she seems to have boxed herself in to not wanting much because of it. She puts up with her boring relationship, she plods along in her daily routine, and when she suddenly has the chance to change everything up, she's afraid to. 

She begins to make a list of her desires: a new bathmat, a coat, maybe a visit to her daughter in England...small desires indeed. Although, as she notes, these things are important:

Because our needs are our little daily dreams. The little things to be done that project us into tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, the future; trivial things that we plan to buy next week, allowing us to think that next week we'll still be alive.

But despite her caution, and her insistence to herself that everything is just fine the way it is, things go wrong and great wealth does indeed corrupt her intimate circle. Jocelyne must carry on, and she does, with her new sewing blog taking off and making her new friends, opening up new opportunities that will improve her life on a more human scale than 18 million Euros would.

It's a poignant story of money & desire, questioning whether it's really okay to want more, and what it means to our sense of self to have a sudden change like this. I'm sure everyone has thought about what you might do if you won the lotto, the changes you'd make to your life or the things you would buy or places you'd visit. This book makes you think about your desires and their scope, and would be a great discussion starter. If you don't mind a little French sentiment in your reading, this small book might be a great choice for you.  

Also, one of my favourite elements of the book is the fact that it's Jocelyne's work with fabric and haberdashery, and the creative outlet of her sewing blog, which anchors the book. When she's visiting a large fabric store in Paris the day she is wandering around stunned at her win, she says

My hands plunge into the fabrics, my fingers tremble at the contact with organdie, fine felt, jute, patchwork. I feel the intoxication... All the women here are beautiful. Their eyes shine. Looking at a piece of fabric, they already imagine a dress, a cushion, a doll. They make dreams; they have the beauty of the world at their fingertips.

Despite some minor flaws, this was a solid read giving a reader quite a bit to think about.  

(originally published at Following the Thread)

Threads of the Heart

The Threads of the Heart / Carole Martinez
trans. from the French by Howard Curtis
NY: Europa, 2012, c2007.
399 p.

As mentioned in my last Thursday's post, I just started this one last week, and I finished it quickly. I was drawn to it by the description -- some magical embroidery in there is just what I needed to put this on my TBR, and then I found a copy at a thrift store. It was meant to be! 

It was written in French, but is set in a remote hill town in Spain. There are elements of magical realism; the previously mentioned embroidery, for example. It is basically the story of a family, told by Soledad, the youngest surviving child, in her own adult years. 

Frasquita is the mother, the woman who has inherited a gift that is passed on from mother to daughter in her family. There is a blindfolded ritual in the night, and the daughter must then wait to open a box in which her gift resides. Frasquita's gift was sewing, and her gowns can make someone beautiful for the first time in their lives, or hide a pregnancy, or stitch life back into someone on death's door. Her skill attracts the attention of a local aristocrat, however, and he becomes locked into a cycle of rooster fighting and bets with Frasquita's husband José with his ultimate aim being to gain Frasquita. 

This is a middle aged woman with four children by this time, and an unusual patience for her lumpish husband. But José's greed gets the best of him and he gambles away Frasquita. This moment sets her on her own road, and she takes her children and a cart, and sets off walking all across southern Spain and into Africa, dragging her children behind her for years. They encounter civil war, revolutionaries, a kindly Arabic woman who rescues them, and much more. The stories are larger than life, political, romantic, dreadful, fantastical, until finally Soledad decides to end this legacy of the family curse herself. 

Sewing is not only a plot element, it's also a strong metaphor for a lot of what goes on in this book. When Soledad is still young, Frasquita is dying. And this is what Soledad says:

I found this an engrossing read, definitely in the tradition of magical realism, but with a starker setting. It's Martinez's first novel, and it's a strong debut. Apparently it is also going to be made into a film, and it would be interesting to see if that ever shows up in the English world as well. 

If you are also drawn to this kind of storytelling, and the idea of stitching the world in place appeals to you, give this one a try yourself. Just allow yourself some time to get into the rhythm of the book, and you may find that this lengthy book flies by. 

The Bridge of Beyond

The Bridge of Beyond / Simone Schwarz-Bart
trans. from the French by Barbara Bray
NY: NYRB Classics, 2013, c1972.
246 p.

Another book in French, but this time we're on the island of Guadeloupe, in this Caribbean classic by Simone Schwarz-Bart. It's a dreamy life story, told in snippets across the lifetime of Telumée as she grows from child to elder in her own right. 

This strong character also takes us through the history of Guadeloupe -- its colonial past and the reverberations, gender relations, even the landscape itself is an integral part of the narrative. Telumee's mother has two children; Telumee and her stepsister Regina. But when a new man comes into her life, she sends Telumee to her grandmother in the hills, and that's pretty much the last Telumee sees of her original family. 

Her grandmother raises her, and she's a bright pretty young girl who works hard and has a good outlook on life despite poverty and limited options. She's friends with a neighbour boy and it seems likely they will marry when they are old enough. But Telumee goes off to work as a servant in a big house over the Bridge of Beyond. She is a capable and dependable domestic but after the master of the house makes advances, she simply leaves, and walks home to her grandmother. The neighbour boy is still there waiting, and they marry as expected, but the marriage turns bad quite quickly. 

After going through that trauma, she is restored to herself thanks to the efforts of the old women in the community. And then after her grandmother dies, she moves up to an even more remote hill settlement and suffers more setbacks. 

Her life seems to be a dreary, miserable one in many ways, but she keeps her spirits, and shows a resilience that comes of having no other choice. As her grandmother tells her early on in life, "Behind one pain there is another. Sorrow is a wave without end. But the horse mustn’t ride you, you must ride it." This book seems to illustrate that maxim thoroughly. 

While there are depressing elements to Telumee's life and this narrative, there is also a heart of something solid, content, joyful, that comes out as well. It's a beautifully told story, with unforgettable imagery and characters who are complex and drive the action, such as it is. It's a classic for good reason. There is a poetry to it, and it is definitely a memorable read. 

The Island of Books

 

The Island of Books / Dominique Fortier
trans. from the French by Rhonda Mullins
TO: Coach House, 2016, c2011.
176 p.

It's true that there is a right time for a book. I picked up this one a couple of years ago and just couldn't get into it. But then I picked it up again last weekend and spent the entire afternoon absorbed in it, start to finish. 

It's an unusual book -- partly fiction about a French portrait painter & Mont St. Michel in the 15th century, but interspersed with autobiographical chapters in the author's voice about her writer's block after becoming a mother. 

Although this may seem strange, the two are tied together both in tone and with the focus on words and the power of books & writing. In the author's case, reclaiming her role as a writer -- in the historical parts, about books, literacy, power in the era in which limited access to books created by scribes was being shaken by the arrival of the printing press. 

But there's also a love story. Our painter Eloi has lost his young lover but has no right to mourn for her since she was someone else's wife. In his despair he is rescued by his cousin Robert, who is an important member of the religious community at Mont St. Michel, and who brings Eloi there to recover. Their relationship is also based on their love for one another, and it is gentle and powerfully moving.

Although Eloi can't read, he's put to work using his artistic skills in the scriptorium to earn his keep. As he begins to understand how much books and learning mean to Robert and some of the other monks, his own view of life shifts. There are elements of philosophy, history, even gardening, in this story, which is pretty slow-paced and meandering in its plot. I found it thoughtful and full of ideas about all kinds of things, whether books, history or how to live life. If you are in the mood for a quiet book on a sunny Sunday afternoon you might also be as quickly drawn into this as I was.

The unusual structure might put some people off, but I suggest giving it a try. I felt that it worked well, and that both elements enriched one another. It was a satisfying reading experience, by a French Canadian author who has written other historical novels with the same reserved tone and deliberate pacing. If you like this feel to your books, you'll get along with this author in general.