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The First Garden
Flora Fontages is a famous Parisian actress who has been in exile from her native Canada for twenty years. When word comes that her long-estranged daughter, Maud, has disappeared in Quebec City, she decides to return home, accepting the part of Winnie, the old crone in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, at a local theatre. The visit unexpectedly turns into a devastating confrontation with her past and present illusions, as Flora finds she must come to terms with all the roles she has ever played in life, as actress, woman, mother, child, and lover.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Anne Hébert
54 books78 followersAnne Hébert was a Canadian author and poet. She won Canada's top literary honor, the Governor General's Award, three times, twice for fiction and once for poetry.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 26, 2019
Mon meilleur d'elle jusqu'à présent c'est mystérieux, une écriture vraiment, mais vraiment envoûtante (dans le bon sens du terme).
April 26, 2023
3.5/5 quelque chose d'ancien ou d'antérieur à moi-même m'interpelle à travers les espaces, les silences du texte. je pense que ça me prendrait plus d'un lecture pour saisir tout ce que cela implique à la fois personnellement, émotionnellement, mais aussi narrativement parlant. histoire forte en images, je redécouvre la ville de Québec. beau lien entre l'exploration du territoire physique et intérieur, avec la trajectoire/destinée des femmes. Anne me rend tjrs mélancoco... & il y a toujours quelque chose qui m'échappe.
February 8, 2024
3.5
J'ai beaucoup aimé, mais la fin m'a déçu. J'aurais aimé quelque chose de plus, une dernière clarté dans le récit. Le personnage de Raphaël m'intéresse grandement. Il semble cacher une complexité trop peu dévoilé.
J'ai beaucoup aimé, mais la fin m'a déçu. J'aurais aimé quelque chose de plus, une dernière clarté dans le récit. Le personnage de Raphaël m'intéresse grandement. Il semble cacher une complexité trop peu dévoilé.
April 23, 2023
De toute beauté.
À lire et à relire, à l’ombre de la porte St-Jean.
À lire et à relire, à l’ombre de la porte St-Jean.
September 19, 2017
The First Garden is not a book I would have chosen to appear on a list of essential reading.
There. I've said it. It's not a bad book - it's a very good book, as it happens. It's just that Kamouraska is a better book and if you're going to pick just one of Anne Hébert's novels why wouldn't you pick it? It would make sense. That was the novel that earned her France's Prix des Libraires and the Royal Belgian Academy's prize. It was made into a film by Claude Jutra using a screenplay on which she collaborated, and it established her as an international literary star.
It seems almost perverse to choose The First Garden, a rather slight (150 pages) novel Hébert wrote later in life about an aging Parisian actress who returns to Quebec to take part in a stage production of Beckett's Happy Days. Does this sound as engaging as the story of a beautiful, impulsive woman who conspires with her lover to murder her husband? I thought not. As I said - perverse.
Checking out the contributors' bios at the beginning of the book of lists, I found this: AB is "a former economist...and is completing a DPhil on Samuel Beckett...at the University of Sussex". Aha! Well, that explains it. If the professor had been pursuing his doctorate in something else - violence against women, perhaps, or dangerous passions in 19th century Quebec - Kamouraska might have indeed made the list.
But it didn't. So, back to The First Garden.
Flora Fontanges, the actress, abandoned Quebec 20 years ago for a larger stage. She has been successful, achieving fame and financial security in France, as well as giving birth to a daughter, Maude. Things have not gone well between her and her daughter; the young girl has run away several times and now it appears she's gone missing from a commune in Quebec City. An offer to return to Canada to play Winnie in Happy Days is an opportunity as well to try to find her daughter. And, perhaps, mend fences.
While waiting for rehearsals to begin, Flora forms a platonic attachment to the young man who's been living with her daughter. Together, she and Raphaël explore the city, searching for Maude, and summoning women from the past and giving them new life, if only momentarily. They begin with Barbe Abbadie, a woman who must have done something important as she has a street named after her. A 17th century merchant's wife, they decide, "gripped by fear and respect", who dies giving birth at the age of thirty. Then there's Marie Rollet, the first European woman to settle in New France - "the mother of the country". And little Renée Chauvreux, found dead in the snow on the fourth of January, 1670.
Renée was one of the King's daughters - the young women who were transported to New France under the sponsorship of Louis XIV. Determined to honour them, Flora and Raphaël stand on the pier at Anse-au-Foulon and recite their names, like saying the rosary. Unfortunately, while doing so, Hébert perpetuates an old rumour about the filles du roi. New France had a bad reputation among French peasant women, she writes. And so the king turned to the Salpêtrière, a hospice for the poor of Paris and a prison for prostitutes:
"In the absence of peasant women, they must now be content with these persons of no account who have come from Paris, with a dowry from the King of fifty livres per head. ...these filles du roi, fresh and young and without a past, purified by the sea during a long rough crossing on a sailing ship."
In fact, there's never been any proof that any of the King's daughters were prostitutes. They were poor, for the most part, and many had been abandoned and had no future in France. They married and produced children and only one, according to the record, turned to prostitution in her new homeland, after being abandoned by her husband.
Increasingly, Flora is haunted by dreams and daydreams, a blend of real and imagined events. Old images of her childhood assail her. Against her will she finds herself back in the apartment on rue Bourlamaque, the home of her adoptive parents. M. and Mme Eventurel take her in after a fire at the Hospice Saint-Louis burned 36 other young girls. Rosa Gaudrault, a young maid - the only one to show love for the child - dies in that fire, risking her life to go back into the burning building and rescue as many children as she could. The Eventurels rename the child and raise her to conform to their idea of a model daughter, suited to their highly stratified society. But she rebels. Her vocation, she believes, is to be an actress. There is salvation in words - she can recreate herself with her gift of speech, of drama:
"Her deepest desire was to live in some other place than within herself, for just a minute, one brief minute, to see what it is like in a head other than her own, another body, to be incarnated anew, to know what it is like in some other place, to know new sorrows, new joys, to try on a different skin from her own, the way one tries on gloves in a store, to stop gnawing on the one bone of her actual life and feed on strange, disorienting substances. To shatter into ten, a hundred, a thousand indestructible fragments; to be ten, a hundred, a thousand new and indestructible persons. To go from one to the other, not lightly as one changes dresses, but to inhabit profoundly another being with all the knowledge, the compassion, the sense of rootedness, the efforts to adapt, and the strange and fearsome mystery that would entail."
Over the years Flora has lived in many different skins: Ophelia, Miss Julie, Hedda Gabbler, Mary Tudor, Phaedra. And now she'll inhabit Winnie, who's determined to remain hopeful while buried first to her waist, and then her neck, in the detritus of her life. Preparing for this role, Flora is haunted by her own past and that of all those women who tried to conform ... and were so often punished if they did not:
"And thus has Flora Fontanges in the past approached Ophelia, downstream among the drifting flowers, asking the same tormenting question of Ophelia as of Renée Chauvreux, about the bitter destiny of girls. Why?"
Why, indeed? There are no answers to be found. We never find out why Maude is always running away. We never learn why Flora was abandoned as a child, although we can guess. And we never get more than a brief, one-dimensional outline of any of those women summoned from the past.
As for Flora, she, like Winnie, goes back to doing what she knows best. She goes back into exile, returning to Paris with a letter in her bag offering her the part of Mme Frola in the Pirandello drama, Right You Are.
It's a good read, as I said, but if you're only going to read one book by Anne Hébert make it Kamouraska. I promise not to tell the professor.
There. I've said it. It's not a bad book - it's a very good book, as it happens. It's just that Kamouraska is a better book and if you're going to pick just one of Anne Hébert's novels why wouldn't you pick it? It would make sense. That was the novel that earned her France's Prix des Libraires and the Royal Belgian Academy's prize. It was made into a film by Claude Jutra using a screenplay on which she collaborated, and it established her as an international literary star.
It seems almost perverse to choose The First Garden, a rather slight (150 pages) novel Hébert wrote later in life about an aging Parisian actress who returns to Quebec to take part in a stage production of Beckett's Happy Days. Does this sound as engaging as the story of a beautiful, impulsive woman who conspires with her lover to murder her husband? I thought not. As I said - perverse.
Checking out the contributors' bios at the beginning of the book of lists, I found this: AB is "a former economist...and is completing a DPhil on Samuel Beckett...at the University of Sussex". Aha! Well, that explains it. If the professor had been pursuing his doctorate in something else - violence against women, perhaps, or dangerous passions in 19th century Quebec - Kamouraska might have indeed made the list.
But it didn't. So, back to The First Garden.
Flora Fontanges, the actress, abandoned Quebec 20 years ago for a larger stage. She has been successful, achieving fame and financial security in France, as well as giving birth to a daughter, Maude. Things have not gone well between her and her daughter; the young girl has run away several times and now it appears she's gone missing from a commune in Quebec City. An offer to return to Canada to play Winnie in Happy Days is an opportunity as well to try to find her daughter. And, perhaps, mend fences.
While waiting for rehearsals to begin, Flora forms a platonic attachment to the young man who's been living with her daughter. Together, she and Raphaël explore the city, searching for Maude, and summoning women from the past and giving them new life, if only momentarily. They begin with Barbe Abbadie, a woman who must have done something important as she has a street named after her. A 17th century merchant's wife, they decide, "gripped by fear and respect", who dies giving birth at the age of thirty. Then there's Marie Rollet, the first European woman to settle in New France - "the mother of the country". And little Renée Chauvreux, found dead in the snow on the fourth of January, 1670.
Renée was one of the King's daughters - the young women who were transported to New France under the sponsorship of Louis XIV. Determined to honour them, Flora and Raphaël stand on the pier at Anse-au-Foulon and recite their names, like saying the rosary. Unfortunately, while doing so, Hébert perpetuates an old rumour about the filles du roi. New France had a bad reputation among French peasant women, she writes. And so the king turned to the Salpêtrière, a hospice for the poor of Paris and a prison for prostitutes:
"In the absence of peasant women, they must now be content with these persons of no account who have come from Paris, with a dowry from the King of fifty livres per head. ...these filles du roi, fresh and young and without a past, purified by the sea during a long rough crossing on a sailing ship."
In fact, there's never been any proof that any of the King's daughters were prostitutes. They were poor, for the most part, and many had been abandoned and had no future in France. They married and produced children and only one, according to the record, turned to prostitution in her new homeland, after being abandoned by her husband.
Increasingly, Flora is haunted by dreams and daydreams, a blend of real and imagined events. Old images of her childhood assail her. Against her will she finds herself back in the apartment on rue Bourlamaque, the home of her adoptive parents. M. and Mme Eventurel take her in after a fire at the Hospice Saint-Louis burned 36 other young girls. Rosa Gaudrault, a young maid - the only one to show love for the child - dies in that fire, risking her life to go back into the burning building and rescue as many children as she could. The Eventurels rename the child and raise her to conform to their idea of a model daughter, suited to their highly stratified society. But she rebels. Her vocation, she believes, is to be an actress. There is salvation in words - she can recreate herself with her gift of speech, of drama:
"Her deepest desire was to live in some other place than within herself, for just a minute, one brief minute, to see what it is like in a head other than her own, another body, to be incarnated anew, to know what it is like in some other place, to know new sorrows, new joys, to try on a different skin from her own, the way one tries on gloves in a store, to stop gnawing on the one bone of her actual life and feed on strange, disorienting substances. To shatter into ten, a hundred, a thousand indestructible fragments; to be ten, a hundred, a thousand new and indestructible persons. To go from one to the other, not lightly as one changes dresses, but to inhabit profoundly another being with all the knowledge, the compassion, the sense of rootedness, the efforts to adapt, and the strange and fearsome mystery that would entail."
Over the years Flora has lived in many different skins: Ophelia, Miss Julie, Hedda Gabbler, Mary Tudor, Phaedra. And now she'll inhabit Winnie, who's determined to remain hopeful while buried first to her waist, and then her neck, in the detritus of her life. Preparing for this role, Flora is haunted by her own past and that of all those women who tried to conform ... and were so often punished if they did not:
"And thus has Flora Fontanges in the past approached Ophelia, downstream among the drifting flowers, asking the same tormenting question of Ophelia as of Renée Chauvreux, about the bitter destiny of girls. Why?"
Why, indeed? There are no answers to be found. We never find out why Maude is always running away. We never learn why Flora was abandoned as a child, although we can guess. And we never get more than a brief, one-dimensional outline of any of those women summoned from the past.
As for Flora, she, like Winnie, goes back to doing what she knows best. She goes back into exile, returning to Paris with a letter in her bag offering her the part of Mme Frola in the Pirandello drama, Right You Are.
It's a good read, as I said, but if you're only going to read one book by Anne Hébert make it Kamouraska. I promise not to tell the professor.
August 20, 2020
I read this version in english because I wasn't able to find a copy in french. Overall, it was an okay book. There were some parts I found interesting but overall it was pretty boring. I had to read it for a french literature course I took this summer.
June 12, 2016
Flora is an actress in France, however she gets called to play Winnie in Beckett’s Happy Days in Quebec so she moves there. On the way she tries to seek out her estranged daughter Maude and meets up with her boyfriend Raphael. On this journey Flora starts to mix up her past roles in the theatre with her past life as an adopted child and then her early years as an actress. In this encounter with her past Flora rediscovers herself and learns how to cope with her present life.
I have to say that this was a pleasant read. There are moments of beauty and ugliness but I admit that it didn’t make my jaw drop or make me claim that it changed my life. It’s a good read. It’s poignant in places and you feel satisfied when you close the book. It’s a solid novel.
I have to say that this was a pleasant read. There are moments of beauty and ugliness but I admit that it didn’t make my jaw drop or make me claim that it changed my life. It’s a good read. It’s poignant in places and you feel satisfied when you close the book. It’s a solid novel.
December 19, 2018
Beautifully written but not enough story for me. I found this book on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list, which often has some rather obscure, but often wonderful finds. This one fell a little short for me and I understand why it is pretty hard to find.
An aging Parisian actress, Flora Fontages, returns home to French Canada after twenty years abroad to play the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days". She also plans to reconcile with her estranged daughter, but finds that she has disappeared. Instead, she befriends her daughter's quasi-boyfriend and the cultish commune her daughter was a part of. Through her return, she relives her childhood in the city, where she was orphaned and adopted by an upper-class family with very specific expectations of her. Often told in dreamlike flashbacks, or stream of conscious present, Flora's present life is lost within her past and within the many roles she's played on stage.
While the words themselves are lyrical and poetic, I often found myself very lost. I often had to read sentences and paragraphs many times before either understanding them or giving up and moving on. It felt more like a long poem than a structured novel and I guess read as such it might be much more enjoyable. But I wanted more cohesive story and less meandering prose.
An aging Parisian actress, Flora Fontages, returns home to French Canada after twenty years abroad to play the role of Winnie in Samuel Beckett's "Happy Days". She also plans to reconcile with her estranged daughter, but finds that she has disappeared. Instead, she befriends her daughter's quasi-boyfriend and the cultish commune her daughter was a part of. Through her return, she relives her childhood in the city, where she was orphaned and adopted by an upper-class family with very specific expectations of her. Often told in dreamlike flashbacks, or stream of conscious present, Flora's present life is lost within her past and within the many roles she's played on stage.
While the words themselves are lyrical and poetic, I often found myself very lost. I often had to read sentences and paragraphs many times before either understanding them or giving up and moving on. It felt more like a long poem than a structured novel and I guess read as such it might be much more enjoyable. But I wanted more cohesive story and less meandering prose.
April 18, 2025
When I first picked up this book, I thought the writing was gorgeous. It was so poetic, the way it painted the characters and the city and the emotions. It had such a distinct atmosphere.
And then... Nothing really happened. The entire middle of the book reiterated the same traits for the main character, over and over and over, until I started to resent her and her sorrowful memories that were constantly shoved in my face. "Look at this sad, old woman! Look! Look!"
At one point, I skipped three chapters and found that I had missed nothing. Then I skipped another three, and another three, and the story didn't pick up again until the very end of the book. Even skimming it, it was dreadfully boring, like reading the same one poem every time I picked up the book. I could barely force myself to finish it.
The ending wasn't the least bit satisfying either. Again, nothing really happened, but the same stale emotions and awkwardness between characters.
If this had been written as a short story or at least a novella, rather than an entire novel, I think it could have been fabulous.
And then... Nothing really happened. The entire middle of the book reiterated the same traits for the main character, over and over and over, until I started to resent her and her sorrowful memories that were constantly shoved in my face. "Look at this sad, old woman! Look! Look!"
At one point, I skipped three chapters and found that I had missed nothing. Then I skipped another three, and another three, and the story didn't pick up again until the very end of the book. Even skimming it, it was dreadfully boring, like reading the same one poem every time I picked up the book. I could barely force myself to finish it.
The ending wasn't the least bit satisfying either. Again, nothing really happened, but the same stale emotions and awkwardness between characters.
If this had been written as a short story or at least a novella, rather than an entire novel, I think it could have been fabulous.
January 5, 2025
Complexe à lire au sens où durant les 100 premières pages il est difficile de comprendre où l'histoire se dirige. Des allés retour du passé au présent rendent l'histoire intéressante à partir du moment où on comprend les différentes vies que le personnage a vécue. La fin est plutôt fade et peu élaborée.
January 1, 2022
As with Flora Fontagnes' role, this book holds my heart with both hands. The writing (and translation) is stunning, stretching my heart to mould its words within.
The ending, with mention of her new role, adds a further dimension. Look up the synopsis of what is referred to.
The ending, with mention of her new role, adds a further dimension. Look up the synopsis of what is referred to.
April 22, 2021
This was an easy read. I will say that I did not really get into whatever the plot was to take me. It was just what I call a slice of someone's life.
September 15, 2021
Seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo but make it dull and without the ✨
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March 3, 2017This was a text for a performance studies class taught by my French instructor. Performance in all its large and small manifestations. Slow and meditative; a book full of passages I found myself needing to underline frequently.
"Flora Fontanges brings down her arms. Slowly comes back to herself. Lazarus emerging from the tomb may have experienced this, the extreme slowness of the entire being who must learn again how to live." p33
"Flora Fontanges brings down her arms. Slowly comes back to herself. Lazarus emerging from the tomb may have experienced this, the extreme slowness of the entire being who must learn again how to live." p33
February 20, 2016
***
WARNING: My rating might be slightly biased, as the author was born less than 10km from my hometown.
I was quite happy when the randomizer elected to choose this novel, one of the only written by French Canadian (or, rather, Québécois) authors (the other being The Tin Flute by Gabrielle Roy). However, I was slightly disappointed when I finished reading it, as it was definitely not as good as I expected, considering its presence on the List. It follows Flora Fontanges, a theater actress living in France, who returns to Quebec City after a 20-year absence when she was offered a role in a Beckett's play and her daughter, compulsive runaway, wants her to reunite there. Throughout her sojourn in Quebec City, she relives in her mind through various sightings not only her own difficult past experiences, but also fictitious experiences as lived by various women across the history of Quebec City. Hébert's writing style is somewhat similar to Marguerite Duras, which short, simple and at times poetic sentences that serve the purpose of creating an atmosphere, a set of emotions in the mind of the reader, rather than stating the emotions as lived by the characters. This was quite interesting until the end of the novel, when Flora reunites her runaway daughter; it felt like the ending had no real "ending" purpose or, worse, it didn't seem to add anything else to the story: it was neither really open-ended nor conclusive. I liked though the reminiscence aspect of Quebec City throughout history, as I clearly associate the various locations and could clearly imagine the scenes being depicted.
Two more comments: firstly, this book will be hard to find in any other language than French. There was an independent publishing house (http://www.houseofanansi.com/) which produced an English translation, but it appears out print now (there is an e-book version though, it appears); secondly, personally, I think the editors of the List might not have chosen her best effort: I believe that Kamouraska (which I have read and is frequently included in the high school corpus) or In the Shadow of the Wind (Les Fous de Bassan) would have been better choices.
March 25, 2014
I'm not even sure how to really review this book.
For starters, it's weird. I'm just going to throw that out here right now, it's weird. This book is the great beginnings of a Cannes Film Festival movie: something that you watch just to say that you've seen a foreign film, but you have no idea what it is about.
On the other side of this, it gives the reader a lot to think about in a way. Flora Fontanges is an actress, exiled from Quebec for twenty years, comes back to audition for a part, oh, and she's trying to find her estranged daughter.
Half of the book is in flashbacks about her life, Maud (her daughter), and even the history of Quebec. That's a lot going on. But it's different in a way that it's very abstract, which may be part of the reason that I didn't like it as much. Maybe if I read it again later on in my life I'll be able to understand it a little better.
For starters, it's weird. I'm just going to throw that out here right now, it's weird. This book is the great beginnings of a Cannes Film Festival movie: something that you watch just to say that you've seen a foreign film, but you have no idea what it is about.
On the other side of this, it gives the reader a lot to think about in a way. Flora Fontanges is an actress, exiled from Quebec for twenty years, comes back to audition for a part, oh, and she's trying to find her estranged daughter.
Half of the book is in flashbacks about her life, Maud (her daughter), and even the history of Quebec. That's a lot going on. But it's different in a way that it's very abstract, which may be part of the reason that I didn't like it as much. Maybe if I read it again later on in my life I'll be able to understand it a little better.
December 12, 2009
Pour moi qui ne suis pas un grand fan d'Anne Hébert, je trouve que Le Premier Jardin a de grandes qualités. Avec une plume complexe mais riche, l'auteur nous amène dans la ville de Québec à différentes époques, notamment à l'ère où les Filles du Roy ont débarqué sur nos quais. On y découvre la situation peu banale des femmes à ces siècles. À lire, sauf si vous êtes contre le gaspillage de papier (si on éliminait les blancs, on couperait facilement la moitié des pages du livre.)
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October 6, 2010Je ne comprends bien jusqu'au maintenant, mais je sens que Hebert est une auteur genial! J'espere de comprener mieux et de finir cette livre dans le futur tres proche.
June 18, 2011
Anne Hebert is a great writer. There is so Quebec culture that helps nurture the creation of really wonderful literature.
May 26, 2012
A dense and literary read about the difficulties of returning home. But also an interesting exploration of character and personality.
December 7, 2023
Cute and sad loved it but completely missed the religious aspect lolll
July 27, 2011
Se revoir quand on était enfant. BEAU!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews