Le Petit Hébert - Chantal Hébert

Le Petit Hébert collects a series of essays that Chantal Hébert published in the Quebec-based magazine L’actualité between 2008 and 2015 (or thereabouts; could go a bit earlier). About two-thirds of the book is divided into four sections, one for each of the four major political parties (Cons, Libs, NDP and the Bloc—sorry, Greens). In these, she gives something of an abridged and selected history, offering essays that highlight the challenges and travails each faced in the years between Stephen Harper forming government in 2008 and Justin Trudeau dethroning him in 2015. The rest of the book comprises a fifth section that could be called “misc,” which collects a range of essays on other topics pertaining to Canadian politics, particularly as it affects Quebec.

Though billed as something of a Canadian politics primer (the subtitle is “La Politique Canadienne Expliquée a mon voisin,“ or “Canadian politics explained to my neighbour”), there doesn’t seem to be any explanatory text added, nor are there definitions outside of what would have appeared in the original articles, whose target audience doubtless already had at least a passing familiarity with the issues of the day. Said audience was also Quebecois, and every story is viewed through that prism (I’d be very surprised if this was ever translated into English).

Hébert is a seasoned reporter with a strong, eloquent style, though her love of idioms makes some passages difficult to understand not only for those not fluent in french, but also those not familiar with Quebec expressions (any idea what it means to be “between the tree and the bark”? Neither does my wife, and she’s as bilingual as they come). Still, the book charted nicely with the period of time in whcih I started following politics, and it was interesting to read about events I recall with the added analysts of an expert in Canadian politics. It’s worth a read if that’s your thing (and if you understand French).

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) - Jean-Dominique Bauby

Le Scaphandre et le Papillon est une livre autobiographique de Jean-Dominique Bauby, un auteur et journaliste Parisien qui était le rédacteur en chef du magazine féminin Elle. La livre s’agit son expérience avec Locked-In Syndrome, dont il a devenu une victime après un attaque cérébrale. L’histoire de comment la livre était écrit, c’est presque plus fascinant que la livre soi-même. Complètement paralysé sauf pour sa paupière gauche, qui il a cligné pour signaler chaque lettre. Une autre personne reciterait chaque lettre de l’alphabet, qui étaient arrangé dans l’ordre de fréquence descendant en la langue Français.

Par ce système tellement fatiguant, Bauby a écrit une livre lyrique est fascinant. Il flotte entre le présent et le passé, discutant un moment le process de son bain, un autre moment un souvenir d’un jour en vacances. C’était une livre plus difficile à comprendre que j’avait pensé, mais néanmoins je m’amusais en lisant. Sa détermination est formidable, et c’est poignant le fait qu’il s’a mort seulement deux jours après la livre était publié.

Colomba - Prosper Mérimée

Colomba est une histoire de vengeance. Il se déroule en Corse, un lieu assez typique pour Mérimée, qui a aimé le pays pour sa sens d’honneur et justice sauvage. Le caractère de Colomba della Rebbia est une jeune femme Corse, le père de qui est assassiné par un ennemi de la famille longtemps, l’avocat Barricini. Son frère revient de France et, renonçant la vengeance, refuse à poursuivre la vendetta qui forme la crux du concept d’honneur en Corse. C’est pour Colomba, par tromperie déception si nécessaire, de convaincre son frère à suivre les customs sacrés du pays.

L’histoire, écrit en la forme de "nouvelle", qui Mérimée a popularisé sinon inventé, est intéressant, avec la style de prose simple et direct qui est typique de Mérimée. Je ne sais pas si son idée de Corse était un embellissement ou tout simplement faux, mais pour une histoire romantique il marche assez bon. Il est un écrivain qui je vais continuer à lire.

Quatre Contes de Prosper Mérimée - Prosper Mérimée

Prosper Mérimée was an interesting dude. Throughout his life, he was, among other things, an archeologist, a historian, a government appointed inspector of French historical monuments for thirty years, an advisor to Emperor Napoleon III, a Senator, and a translator of Russian literature. He spearheaded the restoration of Notre-Dame catherdral, discovered and preserved one of the greatest pieces of medieval tapestry currently known, founded Paris’ Musée national du Moyen Âge (still in operation today), and created the seminal french translation of several of Russia’s greatest writers, including Pushkin and Gogol.

In addition to these many roles, he was also a writer. Though his name has been largely forgotten outside of literary circles, during his life he rivaled Victor hugo for prominenc,e and counted among France’s most popular writers. He became famous for his unadormed style, almost proto-Hemingwayan in its plainspoken precision and focus on detail over imagery. His best-remembered work is probably Carmen, though unfortunately for his posterity it is known mainly from the opera by Georges Bizet. Or at least, this is my impression; it's possible that in France he remains a household name.

The stories included in Quatre Contes are a mixture of adventure and romanticism. The first story is set in Corsica and paints it as a wild and lawless backwoods where honor is more important than everything else, even family. The second story recounts a slave-selling African's unfortunate capture by and escape from a slave ship. This one was the strongest of the four, and contained some bits of biting irony against the high-minded slavers, who considered the smallest concessions to basic decency, such as giving slaves an hour above deck a day, as signs of their benevolence. The third story was a war story, and somewhat disjointed. The last was actually a translation of a story by Pushkin, bu the editor felt its elegant style merited inclusion. All were told in an engaging and plainspoken style that I certainly appreciated, as despite the age of the stories they were much easier for a non-Francophone to grasp than other, more recent works I’ve encountered. I will certainly read other stories by him in the future.

La Peste (The Plague) - Albert Camus

I’ve been wanting to reread Camus’ La Peste for a while, and now seemed like a pretty good time, under the circumstances.

As the title suggests, the novel tells a story about an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the Algerian city of Oran in the 1940s. It spans the entire outbreak, from the initial cases foretold by the sudden death of the city’s rat population to its eventual dissipation, and takes a holistic approach by attempting to capture the spirit of the entire city rather than focusing exclusively on a few characters. That being said, a few figures do feature prominently in the story, particularly the laconic physician Bernard Rieux, who becomes the first to suspect that the disease he is treating is the plague. Other characters include Jean Tarrou, a mysterious figure who arrives in town shortly before the plague and keeps copious notes of his encounters; Raymond Rambert, a journalist from out of town who is caught in the city’s quarantine; Joseph Grand ,a middle-aged clerk who has spent years writing and re-writing the first sentence of a novel; and Cottard, a withdrawn and sullen man who is strangely enlivened by the plague and the demands it places on him.

Though it is eventually revealed to have been written by one of the characters, the text presents itself as an objective statement of fact, musing on motive and experiences of the characters without diving directly into their perspectives. As is typical with Camus, the prose regularly diverges from the immediate narrative to expound on events from a more philosophical approach. I often find this sort of storytelling irritating, or at least dull, but Camus has a gift for it and counts among my favorite authors despite—or maybe even because of—this predilection.

While I have read La Peste before in its English translation, this was my first time reading it in French. Many years passed between the two readings, but I would say the translation was quite faithful, as I found the tone of the book to be much as I remembered. Still, it’s always satisfying to hear an author’s words unfiltered where possible, which is why I’ve enjoyed revisiting some of Camus’ works now that my French is sufficiently advanced to grasp it. Like his other novel,s this one is worth reading in any language.

Transperceneige (Snowpiercer) - Jacques Lob, Jean-Marc Rochette, Benjamin Legrand

La Transperceneige—or “Snowpiercer” in English—is a futuristic trai nwith 1,001 cars containing (what are supposedly) the last living humans on Earth after a global nuclear conflagration induces an eternal winter. At the opening of the story, Transperceneige has devolved into two distinct civilizatiosn sealed off form one another, with the citizens in the frontmost cars living a life of relative luxury, while those in the backmost cars dwell in abhorrent squalor.

The story opens with a “queuetard” (roughly translating to “tail-dweller,” a perjorative for those in the backmost cars) named Proloff, who enacts a daring escape to the front cars only to be captured and questionsed about the deteriorating conditions in his homeland. He gains the support and friendship of Adeline Belleau, a citizen of the upper classes who belongs to a movement favoring integration and equality between the cars. Their struggle defines the first chapter, before abruptly switching to another train called the “Crève-Glace,” or “icebreaker,” and following the exploits of an arpenteur (or “explorer”) named Puig Vallès.

There are a number of twists and turns, and the writing doesn’t take pains to lay everything out for you (though part of that may have been my French, which probably fails to catch some nuance), but the story is coherent enough to propel you forward, even if there are some components that require a fair bit of suspended disbelief. The premise itself is maybe the hardest sell. I still don’t really understand why the sole survivors were on a train, and not in a bunker somewhere, nor am I sure why it was so important that it kept moving. If anything, a trai nseems liek a pretty impractical place to weather an apocalypse. WOuldnt’ the rails have been damaged in some place? And how does it keep going forever? Presumably it’s on a loop, but a loop where, and for what purpose?

I wondered about these things from time to time, but for the most part was comfortable ignoring them. Some stories are more about style than plot, and getting too hung up on technicalities can cause you to miss the positive aspects of the story, and there are several here. The characterization is rich, its heros and villains sufficiently shaded in their ethics to help you pick sides without making the good guys too good or the bad guys too bad. The dialogue is rough and natural, full of contractions and figures of speech that lend an air of verisimilitude and fit the rough-edged post-apocalyptic setting. Admittedly my French is not good enough to truly gauge the accuracy of the speech, but it sounded good to my ear (and also taught me a bunc hfo new swear words, which is an important and often neglected part of language learning. “Salaud” and “bordel” are both going in the old back pocket, as is the euphemistic, s’astiquer (politely translated as to “polish” oneself).

Lastly, I should note that when I checked the book out of the library, I assumed it was the complete series—it is titled to suggest as much—but it turns out this version was published right before a fourth and final volume was released, so I haven’t actually read the true conclusion (which surprised me, as the end seemed fitting). I am intrigued enough to seek this out at some point.

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

There are, in fact, three Madame Bovarys in Madame Bovary, all of whom bear some relation to Charles Bovary, the character who begins the novel as its protagonist and whose life is, in large part, defined and dictated by the three women who share the eponymous moniker. The first two are his mother and first wife, who oversee his transition from shy country boy to competent if not brilliant country doctor. After his first wife’s death, Charles remarries a young woman named Emma, the daughter of a patient, with whom he has grown smitten.

It is this Madame Bovary who becomes the focus of the novel, usurping it from her well-meaning but bumbling husband, for whom she feels more pity than love—that is, until the former emotion sours into contempt. Educated in a convent and devoted to stories of high romance, Emma chafed against the banality of life as a country doctor’s wif,e taking solace in affairs and exuberant spending, which together prove her ruin and that of her husband.

Though very much Emma’s story, the novel is populated with other memorable characters who, though not broad enough to be caricatures, are penned with enough acid to satirize provincial life. There’s Homais, the conceited pharmacist, who speaks in soliloquies and fancies himself an expert in everything; Lheureux, the scheming merchant, who gouges everyone in town and finds a pair of ideal marks in Charles and Emma; Rodolphe Boulange, the wealthy Don Juan who seduces Emma as easily as he eventually discards her.

The writing is elegant and teeming with detail. While I lack a refined ear for style in French, I know enough to appreciate the fluidity of Flaubert’s prose, and though his vocabularity strained the limits of my knowledge, his writing was clear enough to comprehend with only accasion dips into the dictionary. It took me a while to finish, but it was never less than enjoyable to read.

Vingt mille lieues sous la mer (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) - Jules Verne

Vingt mille lieues sous la mer is the fourth Jules Verne novel I’ve read (the third in the original French), and I must say, it’s been my least favorite so far. This surprised me, as the subject matter is something I’m inherently interested in, and while my readings of Verne have never strayed that far form his greatest hits, Vingt mille lieues is arguably the greatest hit of them all (I’d argue Voyage au centre de la terre is second, and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingt jours third, though I admit I’m basing this on my own perception and little else).

Verne could be considered the prototypical nerd, in his use of narrative to obsessively catalog scientific minutiae. Whatever the story, you can bet that at some point, Verne will digress from the action at hand to write 500 breathless words about the origins of igneous rock, or the taxonomic details of coral. In some cases, this is more feature than bug—in de la Terre à la Lune, for instance, when his recurring treatise on ballistics lends credence and weight to what would otherwise be a spare narrative.

The key difference, I think, is that in Lune and Voyage au Centre de la Terre, there is an underlying urgency to the story that keeps Verne’s digressions in check. The cannon needs to launch at the precise date and time in order to hit the moon, and Axel can only spend so much time poring over subterranean fungi before Professor Lidenbrock drags him on to their ultimate destination. In 20,000 lieues, however, the story is essentially a chronicle of Professor Arronax’s time on the Nautilus, which Captain Nemo cruises about the oceans on a whim. Without that forward drive, Verne has no incentive to rush to any one conclusion, and as a result, the detours become the trip. Much of what happens feels like it is of no real consequence, and most events seem primarily positioned to allow Verne the opportunity to spout scientific facts and theories, some of more merit than others (Atlantis makes an appearance). In other Verne works, the opportunity to wax scientific is only part of the reason for events—there’s generally some forward plot momentum going on too.

And the descriptions of fish, my god, the descriptions of fish. There must be close to a dozen passages that are little more than taxonomic litanies of every bit of flora and fauna in a given sea. This is particularly frustrating for a non-native reader, as the names of many creatures he describes fall outside the scope of my e-reader’s built in dictionary, and by the third or fourth fish, I’m just too tired to bother looking them all up on my phone. As such, I’m stuck deducing what he means from the description of each animal. It doesn’t help that he tends to use less common names for some animals (though perhaps this is an issue of age more than erudition). Notably, he uses the word squale for shark in most cases, when a modern French speaker would opt for requin.

This all sounds a bit nit-picky, and maybe it is. Despite the book’s faults, there were still moments I truly enjoyed ,and Verne retains his capacity to make his own wonder at the world infectious. And Captain Nemo is a good character, intriguing in his sombre nobility. He is an honorable man who does dishonorable things, which is about as much nuance as you’re likely to get in a Jules Verne character (like Lovecraft, Verne is the kind of genre fiction writer who eschews character development almost entirely in favor of raw story, and whose vision is so honed and rich that he gets away with it).

Bonjour Tristesse - Francoise Sagan

I encountered this book on recommendation from a friend, who bought me the English translation. However, I make a point of reading French works in the original wherever possible, and fortunately I was able to find a copy at my local library. It would be interesting to pick up the version she gave me and see how it matches up to my interpretation.

Like Nabokov’s Lolita or Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Bonjour Tristesse is less about the story it tells than the person telling it. The narrator, a world-weary seventeen-year-old named Cécile, vacations with her father and his young girlfriend Elsa on the French Riviera. Their peaceful equilibrium is shattered by the arrival of Anne, an attractive and intelligent woman who is a friend of the family through her father’s late wife. Her father soon leaves Elsa for Anne, who insists that Cécile show greater ambition for her studies. Cécile, incensed, resolved to break them up.

Aside from a budding romance with a neighbourhood boy, this is about all the plot the book has to offer. As a storyline, it’s pretty trite, but where the book rises above its tropes is in the complex and partially unspoken feelings that Cécile has for Anne. A more straightforward story would paint Anne as the villain, or at least in the wrong, or flip it by making her misunderstood and forcing Cécile to learn the error of her ways. But while Cécile does show regret for her actions, it is the ambivalence of her attitude that makes her intriguing. She slingshots between crushing doubt and steely resolve over and over again.

As a reader, I find first person perspective to be overused and often misapplied, but this is a book that simply couldn’t work any other way. The story only matters because we hear Cécile telling it. Without direct access to the riptide of her adolescent angst. As I learned my French more through reading than conversation, I struggle to pinpoint accuracy in dialogue, and the fact that this book is written in the voice of a French teenager form the 1950s, I am simply too far removed to argue whether or not that it rings true. I can only say that it flows nicely, and that its flights of poetic fancy are modest enough to avoid the pitfall common to first person books, in which the author adopts a tone too elevated to belong to a casual speaker.

La Chute (The Fall) - Albert Camus

You can always find a reason to kill a man. It is, however, impossible to justify that he live.*

This was the first Camus novel I’ve read exclusively in French. I read The Plague (i.e. La Peste) several years ago in translation, and The Outsider in university before picking up the original L’Etranger. As such, while I would say La Chute is the most challenging of his books I’ve read, I’m aware this could be in part because I read it without a translation to fall back on.

However, I don’t think the complexity comes from the language alone. In his other novels, Camus manages to convey a nuanced philosophy, but he does so through a fairly straightforward narrative. La Chute, however, barely has a plot at all. The book takes the form of a series of largely one-sided conversations with an unnamed narrator, who lives in Amsterdam and works as a self-styled juge-pénitent. Through his musings, we catch snippets of story about his life in Paris as a prominent lawyer representing the downtrodden (widows and orphans, he calls them), and an experience in which he bears witness to a suicide takes a prominent thematic role. But for the most part, the text is simply a recounting of a meandering philosophy, touching on points as disparate as love, work, and the need to be valued.

Camus also plays with the concept of the unreliable narrator more so than in the other books of his I’ve read. The narrator of L’Etranger demonstrates a fair bit of odd behavior, but I didn’t doubt the veracity of what he said. In La Chute, however, it’s hard to say whether anything we’re told is true, as it’s being recounted to us second-hand, and the narrator even makes a point of telling us he’s lied on a couple of occasions. The uncertainty embedded in the narrative is hinted at in one passage:

Truth, like light, blinds you. Lies, however, exist in a twilight in which each object can be clearly seen.**

All in all, I enjoyed La Chute less than Camus’ other books. Likely, this is because of the genre in which it’s written, since I’ve never been a big fan of philosophical novels (I’ve still yet to make it more than 50 pages into Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance). That being said, Camus remains a great writer, and his talent shines through here, even if I’m more likely to pick up La Peste or L’Etranger again in the future.

*il y a toujours des raisons au meurtre d'un homme. Il est, au contraire, impossible de justifier qu'il vivre.

**La vérité, comme la lumière, aveugle. La mensonge, au contraire, est un bien crépuscule, qui met chaque objet en valeur.

De la Terre à la Lune (From the Earth to the Moon) - Jules Verne

This book is insane, even by Jules Verne standards.

The year is 1865. The civil war has been fought and won, and the Union’s crack team of artillery scientists is 1at a loose end. They’ve spent the last several years developing new and exciting ways to kill each other, and now they’ve got a miserable stretch of peace on their hands. Fortunately, their intrepid president, Impey Barbicane, has a solution: build a giant cannon and shoot a bullet at the moon.

Of course.

The United States jumps on Barbicane’s proposal with gusto, and soon the whole country has shoot-the-moon fever. Not to be outdone, a charismatic Parisian named Michel Ardan joins the venture by volunteering to ride inside the bullet. His thoughts on the whole thing are wonderfully cavalier—when asked how he’ll return to Earth once his bullet—a decidedly one-way mode of transport—collides with the moon, his response is simple: he won’t.

The story is punctuated by Vernian digressions explaining in copious (an uncharitable writer might say tortuous) detail: the origins of the solar system, the basic physics of firearms, the composition of explosive powder. These asides emerge sometimes through dialogue between the characters, sometimes form the narrator himself. While their insertion is somewhat artless, I have to say that I find these asides charming, in part because the intervening years have rendered some points startlingly inaccurate. At one point Ardan argues with a naysayer over whether or not there is any air on the moon. Ardan insists there is, and the flow of the narrative leaves little doubt that we are to assume he is correct. The following passage gives a good sense of the tone, which straddles a thin line between staying true to its premise and celebrating its absurdity:

The crowd returned its attention to their hero, whose adversary remained silent. Ardan continued his assertion, speaking without aggression or vanity. “You see, my good sir, one cannot deny with any real certainty the existence of an atmosphere on the moon. Such an atmosphere is likely somewhat thin, but the scientific consensus is that it exists.”

“Not on the mountains,” barked his opponent, not wanting to cede the point.

“No, but in the valleys, and there should be no problem for heights of a few hundred feet.”

“In that case, you’d better take care! The air’s going to be very thin!”

“Good sir, surely there’s enough for one man! What’s more, should I need to ascend, I’ll do my best to conserve it and only breathe on special occasions!”*

Mostly, though, the book’s charm shines through simply because Jules Verne loves science so. much. His outbursts feel like the literary equivalent of that dorky kid in math class with his hand thrust halfway to the ceiling, straining to be picked by the teacher to answer a question about quadratic functions. It’s that earnestness that carries the book.

The narrative itself is slight, with only the most rudimentary plot: some eccentrics decide to shoot a bullet at the moon, they build a cannon,they fire it, the end. Books from that era in general show less interest in “raising stakes” to hold the reader’s interest, allowing for digressions and a detached narrative tone that can often seem almost heartless, as if the plight of the characters was not a story to be viscerally felt, but an experiment to calmly observe and record. Verne, with his perennial interest in science, leans into this trait more than most.

The language itself I find hard to judge. As French isn’t my native tongue, I’m less attuned to changes in style and more or less accept the prose however it’s served to me. However, Verne’s earnest humor shines through even for a non-Francophone, and I found it genuinely fun to read. It may feel like a minor work compared to Voyage au Centre de la Terre, but it’s worth picking up.

*Passage translated from the French