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Trente Arpents
One of the most important books to come out of Quebec, Thirty Acres traces the course of one man's life as he enters into the age old rhythms of the land and of the seasons.
336 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1938
6 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Ringuet
17 books4 followersPhilippe Panneton, or Joseph-Philippe Panneton, (pseudonym Ringuet, which was his mother's maiden name) was a Canadian physician, academic, diplomat and writer.
His novel Thirty Acres won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1940.
In 1959 he was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal.
He received a degree in medicine from Université Laval in 1920. In 1935 he became a professor at the Université de Montréal. In 1944 he was a founding member of L’Académie canadienne-française (now known as the Académie des lettres du Québec) and served as its president from 1947 until 1953. In 1956, he was named ambassador to Portugal, and died in Lisbon in 1960.
His novel Thirty Acres won the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1940.
In 1959 he was awarded the Lorne Pierce Medal.
He received a degree in medicine from Université Laval in 1920. In 1935 he became a professor at the Université de Montréal. In 1944 he was a founding member of L’Académie canadienne-française (now known as the Académie des lettres du Québec) and served as its president from 1947 until 1953. In 1956, he was named ambassador to Portugal, and died in Lisbon in 1960.
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 23, 2025
The English version of this old book is Thirty Acres (Trente Arpents en francais), and I believe you can still find a copy in its New Canadian Library edition.
I struggled through its original French, shortly before my engagement to my forever wife.
We were staying with my (soon-to-be) brother-in-law in densely forested Northern Québec.
He, in keeping with this story, lives in an old-fashioned, darkly and beautifully stained log house much like his habitant forbears.
The cozy furniture is cushioned old wood. The antique decor is to dream on! And so I dreamed - or TRIED to dream of olden times - as I manfully contended with what precise meaning this old-time writer meant to to communicate with this or that outmoded word...
You will get my drift, if I tell you the scraps of meaning I managed to glean from this classic novel seem now to me strongly redolent of the practical, no-nonsense and no-frills life of the terse narrator of that modern Polish novel, Stone Upon Stone.
And thankfully I’m reading the latter classic in English!
But those were wonderful times up in our Northland.
A vacation from the non-stop stress of the city, for that’s where we lived at that time. I recall my tuneful relatives loved the fact that I often put my cassettes of Mozart’s Don Giovanni on their stereo...
But ONLY when I wasn’t painfully struggling with my rudimentary French so badly!
I love peace and quiet and a simple, uncluttered life. Most gadgets can become scrap, and good riddance to them all...
And THIS book will take you back to an uncluttered Time like that.
To those early homesteading days of clearing brush on your concession tract, arduously hauling away the more knotty and unusable timber, and finally setting to work at constructing your OWN log cabin.
Yes, it was a simple life.
But it was also damnably hard, and new settlers had to be tough as nails. And back in those days, the land had to be shared with Grizzlies and Iroquois, so you never knew when your number was up.
But isn’t it wonderful that our communities, now interlaced with freeways, were once a place of sharing, and of real, heartfelt laughter and tears?
And honest-to-God moments, amid the fractious struggles of daily life, of pure pastoral peace?
AND the rock solid Credos and Values to buttress it all up in a Wild, Savage World?
Canadians in those early days of the nineteenth century had no time for nonsense. To survive meant to work, sweat, and really Live a Fully Human Life.
And, with imagination and heart, you can make even reading a novel like this, as I did in an unlearned language, into an authentic experience of our forbears’ conversion of unyielding soil into a Real place to call Home, in all its rural simplicity.
I struggled through its original French, shortly before my engagement to my forever wife.
We were staying with my (soon-to-be) brother-in-law in densely forested Northern Québec.
He, in keeping with this story, lives in an old-fashioned, darkly and beautifully stained log house much like his habitant forbears.
The cozy furniture is cushioned old wood. The antique decor is to dream on! And so I dreamed - or TRIED to dream of olden times - as I manfully contended with what precise meaning this old-time writer meant to to communicate with this or that outmoded word...
You will get my drift, if I tell you the scraps of meaning I managed to glean from this classic novel seem now to me strongly redolent of the practical, no-nonsense and no-frills life of the terse narrator of that modern Polish novel, Stone Upon Stone.
And thankfully I’m reading the latter classic in English!
But those were wonderful times up in our Northland.
A vacation from the non-stop stress of the city, for that’s where we lived at that time. I recall my tuneful relatives loved the fact that I often put my cassettes of Mozart’s Don Giovanni on their stereo...
But ONLY when I wasn’t painfully struggling with my rudimentary French so badly!
I love peace and quiet and a simple, uncluttered life. Most gadgets can become scrap, and good riddance to them all...
And THIS book will take you back to an uncluttered Time like that.
To those early homesteading days of clearing brush on your concession tract, arduously hauling away the more knotty and unusable timber, and finally setting to work at constructing your OWN log cabin.
Yes, it was a simple life.
But it was also damnably hard, and new settlers had to be tough as nails. And back in those days, the land had to be shared with Grizzlies and Iroquois, so you never knew when your number was up.
But isn’t it wonderful that our communities, now interlaced with freeways, were once a place of sharing, and of real, heartfelt laughter and tears?
And honest-to-God moments, amid the fractious struggles of daily life, of pure pastoral peace?
AND the rock solid Credos and Values to buttress it all up in a Wild, Savage World?
Canadians in those early days of the nineteenth century had no time for nonsense. To survive meant to work, sweat, and really Live a Fully Human Life.
And, with imagination and heart, you can make even reading a novel like this, as I did in an unlearned language, into an authentic experience of our forbears’ conversion of unyielding soil into a Real place to call Home, in all its rural simplicity.
April 20, 2020
A while back, I made the decision to read through the entire list of Governor General Award winners in order to gain a better understanding of my country's development as a literary nation, thus ushering in a steady stream (okay, trickle) of inconveniences and bad-to-mediocre novels into my life. Go ahead, try to find a copy of The Dark Weaver, I dare you! (Actually, don't: I promise, it won't be worth it, unless you're fascinated by bad melodrama and the history of Icelandic immigration in Manitoba).
And so, enter Thirty Acres , the latest regionalist (and naturalist) novel to tackle the transition, in rural Canada, from agrarianism to industrialism and the concomitant decline (moral, political, economic) of its human civilization. (To be fair to Ringuet, his novel's not that simplistic; on the other hand, it's also not that complex.) The novel tracks the rise and fall of its protagonist, Euchariste Moisan, the inheritor and carrier of the Moisin family's agricultural and familial legacy, as he grapples with the classic tensions of rural realism: country vs. city, land vs. people, progressivism vs. conservatism, human/nature vs. machine, morals vs. money, etc. Moisin is portrayed as a sort of tragic hero, a skilled farmer and at-least-not-terrible husband and father whose pride, like that of his forebears, prevents him from adapting to a changing society. As he ages, Euchariste's willingness to work the land stands in stark contrast to that of the new generations, or even some members of his own generation, such as his cousin Edouard, for whom "the attraction of town life had counted for a good deal in his decision and so had a rather happy-go-lucky, lazy streak in his disposition that had made him think clerking in a store more congenial than the hard drudgery of farming" (100); however, even as Ringuet critiques the laxity of the urban inhabitant's work ethic, he acknowledges that the traditional romantic depictions of life on the land, such as "the satisfaction of working one's own land" and "the triumphant beauty of the early morning, when the dew lies on the pastures," are mostly "enjoyed only by those for whom they are not a part of the daily round" (100). In the end, though, you can expect a lot of romanticized imagery of rural life, in contrast with the unpleasant representations of all urban spaces. Even if neither space is perfect, it is clear that, for Ringuet and his characters, rural life is preferable to what has replaced it. The following passage best represents the contrast at the heart of the novel, taken from the first day of Euchariste's first visit to an industrialized city: "Euchariste realized that what he had taken for a well-ploughed field with parallel furrows was the endless roof of a factory that spread over acres and acres of ground and whose canted sections looked like the ridges of furrows.
And so, enter Thirty Acres , the latest regionalist (and naturalist) novel to tackle the transition, in rural Canada, from agrarianism to industrialism and the concomitant decline (moral, political, economic) of its human civilization. (To be fair to Ringuet, his novel's not that simplistic; on the other hand, it's also not that complex.) The novel tracks the rise and fall of its protagonist, Euchariste Moisan, the inheritor and carrier of the Moisin family's agricultural and familial legacy, as he grapples with the classic tensions of rural realism: country vs. city, land vs. people, progressivism vs. conservatism, human/nature vs. machine, morals vs. money, etc. Moisin is portrayed as a sort of tragic hero, a skilled farmer and at-least-not-terrible husband and father whose pride, like that of his forebears, prevents him from adapting to a changing society. As he ages, Euchariste's willingness to work the land stands in stark contrast to that of the new generations, or even some members of his own generation, such as his cousin Edouard, for whom "the attraction of town life had counted for a good deal in his decision and so had a rather happy-go-lucky, lazy streak in his disposition that had made him think clerking in a store more congenial than the hard drudgery of farming" (100); however, even as Ringuet critiques the laxity of the urban inhabitant's work ethic, he acknowledges that the traditional romantic depictions of life on the land, such as "the satisfaction of working one's own land" and "the triumphant beauty of the early morning, when the dew lies on the pastures," are mostly "enjoyed only by those for whom they are not a part of the daily round" (100). In the end, though, you can expect a lot of romanticized imagery of rural life, in contrast with the unpleasant representations of all urban spaces. Even if neither space is perfect, it is clear that, for Ringuet and his characters, rural life is preferable to what has replaced it. The following passage best represents the contrast at the heart of the novel, taken from the first day of Euchariste's first visit to an industrialized city: "Euchariste realized that what he had taken for a well-ploughed field with parallel furrows was the endless roof of a factory that spread over acres and acres of ground and whose canted sections looked like the ridges of furrows.
The whole thing was a field of metal, a huge sterile meadow, under which men worked like moles, far from the friendly sunlight. To Euchariste, all this was incredible. To his son it was magnificent."
If the above sounds interesting to you, have at it! However, there's not much to recommend this one in comparison to the countless other similar tales. There's some nice writing, and some thoughtful ruminations on the relationship between people and the land; a standard evocation of this theme is as follows (as Ringuet describes how an orphaned Euchariste has found a sense of belonging while living with his uncle and his uncle's distant cousin, who functions as a surrogate mother figure, doing all of the cooking, cleaning, child-rearing, etc.: "These three had united, however, to form a new family; these different fragments had been knit together upon the web of the ancestral farm. The unfeeling and imperious land was the lordly suzerain whose serfs they were, paying their dues to the inclement weather in the form of ruined harvests, subjected to the forced labour of digging ditches and clearing away the forests, compelled the whole year round to pay their tithe in sweat. They had come together on, and almost in opposition to, the harsh soil, from which nothing may be wrung except by sheer strength of arm. They had, because of its dumb will, restored the human trinity: man, woman, child; father, mother, son." So far, so good, in terms of style; however, if you're going to read this novel, you'd better have enjoyed that passage, because you will see it echoed in dozens of other passages just like it, because Ringuet's a man who wants to make sure his reader is getting the point: farming is hard; the family unit is the way people were intended to live; the land is a cold, impersonal master (when flexing its power) or mistress (when it's cooperating).
Because, really, land is the backbone of this story; its four parts, one for each of the seasons, operate as a fairly predictable structural metaphor for the changes in Euchariste's fortunes as he ages (spoiler: North-Eastern Canadian winters are bleak), and Ringuet regales (or bores) his reader with vivid natural imagery that had me longing nostalgically for the Northwestern Ontario of my boyhood--wait, "longing nostalgically" is not quite the right word. I think I meant shuddering anxiously while trying to blot out flashbacks to the snot freezing in my nostrils and frozen oxygen shredding my throat during walks to school in -45 degree weather (ah, the good old days...).
Of course, there are humans in this novel, too, but even then, nature serves as the point of comparison: "The first cawings of the returning crows are a warning to get ready for the spring. But what sign foreshadows the weather that is going to prevail in the hearts of those on whom we depend?" What sign, indeed. Really, Euchariste and, perhaps, his son Ephrem aside, the characters in this book belong mostly to the realm of parable rather than the world of living, breathing humans. Each serves their purpose in the determinist narrative, but ultimately, none of them are at all interesting on their own, which feels inevitable in a novel whose main concern is to depict the destruction, for better and worse (though mostly worse), of the agrarian idyll and the people who ostensibly lived it over the course of about forty years.
Unless you're an enthusiast for early Canlit or literary representations of historical Quebec, give this one a pass and read Frank Norris' The Octopus, The Rise and Fall of Silas Lapham, or even The Good Earth, instead. Though it's an important document of Canadian literary history, as a novel, Thirty Acres is thoroughly mediocre.
January 3, 2021
Excellent livre qui plonge le lecteur dans la réalité qu’était celle de la majorité des Québécois avant la révolution tranquille.
Un quotidien dur, ingrat et frustrant mais curieusement valorisant et séduisant de par la proximité des personnages avec la terre, mais pas seulement. Parce que trente arpents nous permet également de ressentir la proximité existante entre les habitants de l’époque, membres d’une société tissée serrée et unie envers et contre tous.
Des liens qui existent toujours aujourd’hui mais qui ne cessent de s’affaiblir.
Revenir aux racines afin d’imaginer un futur plus communal? C’est l’angle de lecture que je vous propose avec cet excellent ouvrage.
Un quotidien dur, ingrat et frustrant mais curieusement valorisant et séduisant de par la proximité des personnages avec la terre, mais pas seulement. Parce que trente arpents nous permet également de ressentir la proximité existante entre les habitants de l’époque, membres d’une société tissée serrée et unie envers et contre tous.
Des liens qui existent toujours aujourd’hui mais qui ne cessent de s’affaiblir.
Revenir aux racines afin d’imaginer un futur plus communal? C’est l’angle de lecture que je vous propose avec cet excellent ouvrage.
February 12, 2023
I don't normally write reviews, but there don't seem to be many English ones for Thirty Acres, so here I am for anyone who doesn't understand French.
I stumbled upon the translated New Canadian Library edition, so while I desperately wish I would be able to understand the original edition for the textures Ringuet adds by blending standard French, dialectical French, and franglais, I think the translation does a good job trying to replicate the effect in English.
The prose itself is utterly delicious in the richness of vocabulary and the expression in turns-of-phrase that direct a reader's awareness as the land directs the characters. I have encountered few authors who have the sheer linguistic mastery on quite literally every page of this book.
The plot, though, can be a bit difficult. I couldn't have read this book ten years ago. It's slow, methodical, and much is left blurry or unsaid among characters. A lot of expression is entangled in the expectations inherent in a shared worldview. I've seen it summarized as "a tough, no non-sense" kind of thought, but I find that discription a too austere connotation; while practicality certainly is the name of the game, it is so out of necessity. There is particular humor and pointed levity, because these are also just as necessary a part of being human, but it might not translate in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the French.
While all that are the reasons I respect the book, the reason I love it, have it added to my personal canon, is in reading this I recognize so many familiar features of both sides of my family. So much of this book feels one generation off the experience I have exposure to, and echos carry in my grandparents and parents and cousins, and likely also myself. That said, I don't expect my connection to it will necessarily make it five stars for someone else. For what it's worth, I think there's still value expressed in an intricately beautiful way that makes it worth the effort.
I stumbled upon the translated New Canadian Library edition, so while I desperately wish I would be able to understand the original edition for the textures Ringuet adds by blending standard French, dialectical French, and franglais, I think the translation does a good job trying to replicate the effect in English.
The prose itself is utterly delicious in the richness of vocabulary and the expression in turns-of-phrase that direct a reader's awareness as the land directs the characters. I have encountered few authors who have the sheer linguistic mastery on quite literally every page of this book.
The plot, though, can be a bit difficult. I couldn't have read this book ten years ago. It's slow, methodical, and much is left blurry or unsaid among characters. A lot of expression is entangled in the expectations inherent in a shared worldview. I've seen it summarized as "a tough, no non-sense" kind of thought, but I find that discription a too austere connotation; while practicality certainly is the name of the game, it is so out of necessity. There is particular humor and pointed levity, because these are also just as necessary a part of being human, but it might not translate in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with the French.
While all that are the reasons I respect the book, the reason I love it, have it added to my personal canon, is in reading this I recognize so many familiar features of both sides of my family. So much of this book feels one generation off the experience I have exposure to, and echos carry in my grandparents and parents and cousins, and likely also myself. That said, I don't expect my connection to it will necessarily make it five stars for someone else. For what it's worth, I think there's still value expressed in an intricately beautiful way that makes it worth the effort.
April 16, 2023
je n'ai vraiment pas pas eu de fun à lire ce roman du terroir. c'était bien sûr dans le cadre de l'école que j'ai lu ce livre. même si je comprends très bien pourquoi ce livre était étudié en classe et qu'il fallait le finir, je voulais me tirer une balle très sincèrement. je n'ai pas de plaisir à comtempler sur des dizaines de pages la vie des paysans québecois avant l'industrialisation, des vies sans intrigue ou bien désolantes pour certains personnages. c'est long, très très long pour nn'importe quel événement ou action. je crois que le tout aurait pu être une nouvelle plutôt qu'un roman. dans sa forme et sa recherche/observation, le roman est bon. pour un lecteur régulier, s'il vous plaît évitez-vous la torture campagnarde... ou bien non. le terroir, ce n'est tout simplement pas pour moi.
August 1, 2019
Wonderful novel of the eccentricities of turn of the century French-Canadian society.
September 11, 2021
3/5 étoiles
*lu pour le cégep*
Très lent, mais plutôt touchant
*lu pour le cégep*
Très lent, mais plutôt touchant
September 13, 2021
... wow
j'ai pleuré ma vie
j'ai pleuré ma vie
October 8, 2021
C'est un classique du terroir, mais ça manque vraiment d'action. J'ai bien aimé la dernière partie, mais franchement j'étais pas fâchée de le finir.
May 31, 2023
Not hard to read, but gets boring very fast. Not my type of book.
The traditionalism vs. modernization debate in the book is clear and is the primary reason for Euchariste’s fall.
The traditionalism vs. modernization debate in the book is clear and is the primary reason for Euchariste’s fall.
August 1, 2024
Such a great book about Quebec history and how the chain broke in the face of progress.
Posted some of my thoughts and quotes here:
https://x.com/KeturahAbigail/status/1...
Posted some of my thoughts and quotes here:
https://x.com/KeturahAbigail/status/1...
October 6, 2025
Beau livre sur la "vie d'habitant" québécoise. Bien que des passages (surtout au début) sont un peu longs, le livre est captivant et on s'attacqhe beaucoup aux personnages.
September 13, 2016
I just finished reading this novel on Nook. It is a story of change...from an agrarian society to an industrial society. Changes that occur even at the farm level. Ringuet has it right. Change occurs whether one wants it to or not. It is a tragic novel which catches you even when you think the story line gets schmalzy...It's a good read...You can juxtapose and correlate events happening today and find it shattering. I recommend it to anyone. Please read it. It's a story of inheritance.....family ethos......sons and daughters...relatives......immigrants.....loss of language...the fear of loss of one's ethnicity.....what is ethnicity?....Culture..Language.....The fear of change is tantamount to the fear of becoming a stranger in ones' mind.....becoming something foreign when in essence we are all foreigners in a strange land which we try to label to justify our behaviours/actions/views ....all the while looking at the prismatic mirror of our psyche.
September 9, 2013
This novel is about a man who grows up in a pre-industrial world and is slowly destroyed by modernity. Similar theme as that found in the stories of Alistair MacLeod. Moisan is also a stand-in for traditional, old Quebec itself, pushed from a rural, Catholic, French, conservative bubble into a mechanized, bilingual (or even anglicized), urban age where the Church has lost its magic (though, perhaps, not yet its power). There's also lots of alienation going on between Charis Moisan and his children. Due to his reluctance to be forthright, he ends up exiled in a foreign land, isolated and lonely.
The women in this novel are given short shrift. They are basically cardboard props. Alphonsine popping out kiddies till it kills her. Grace, the cousin's American wife, who serves to tempt Ephrem away. Elsie, Ephrem's Irish wife, who is a little mean to her father-in-law until she is caught by him entertaining a local political hotshot.
An interesting counterpoint to Fruits of the Earth. Where Abe embraces modernity and even at times drives it (with the notable exception of the school), Moisan is eroded by it, until he's but a shadow of himself.
The women in this novel are given short shrift. They are basically cardboard props. Alphonsine popping out kiddies till it kills her. Grace, the cousin's American wife, who serves to tempt Ephrem away. Elsie, Ephrem's Irish wife, who is a little mean to her father-in-law until she is caught by him entertaining a local political hotshot.
An interesting counterpoint to Fruits of the Earth. Where Abe embraces modernity and even at times drives it (with the notable exception of the school), Moisan is eroded by it, until he's but a shadow of himself.
March 20, 2018
Ce roman suit la vie d'un paysan au début du 20ème siècle dans le Québec rural. L'écriture est élégante mais peu rapide ni très efficace, à l'image de la littérature de cette époque. L'incapacité du personnage principal, Euchariste Moisan, à s'adapter à la modernité est très bien décrite. J'ai été particulièrement étonné de la franchise avec laquelle la dureté des relations entre membres d'une même famille est rapportée. Lorsqu'un enfant meurt en bas âge, il est vite remplacé. D'autres partent à l'adolescence et ne sont plus jamais revus. On abandonne les jeunes, mais les jeunes abandonnent parfois les vieux, aussi. Au milieu de ces tribulations humaines, la terre des berges du St-Laurent (l'histoire semble se dérouler en Lanaudière ou en Mauricie) est décrite comme éternellement fertile et généreuse. Clairement, ce roman a été écrit avant la prise de conscience écologique de la 2ème moitié du 20ème siècle!
Un témoignage très intéressant sur le Québec rural d'il y a 100 ans, écrit par un médecin et qui n'a paraît-il pas été très apprécié par les lecteurs des campagnes québécoises. On ne s'en étonnera pas, considérant le refus de l'auteur de s'éloigner du réalisme.
Un témoignage très intéressant sur le Québec rural d'il y a 100 ans, écrit par un médecin et qui n'a paraît-il pas été très apprécié par les lecteurs des campagnes québécoises. On ne s'en étonnera pas, considérant le refus de l'auteur de s'éloigner du réalisme.
November 4, 2014
Ce roman publie en 1938 a paru aux debuts de la litterature quebecoise moderne. Il relate la vie terriblement difficile des cultivateurs quebeceoise de l'époque qui arrachaient leurs leurs vies de peine et de misère de la terre ingrate.
Peu de temps, après les auteurs quebecois changeraient leur point de mire. Avec la parution en 1945, de Bonheur d'occasion les ecrivains canadien-francais commenceraient a s'interesser a la vie des ouvriers dans un milieu urbain.
Les romans moins nombreux qui traitaient de la vie dans les milieux agricoles après Trente Arpents arrivaient plus au moins aux memes conclusions que Ringuet.
Peu de temps, après les auteurs quebecois changeraient leur point de mire. Avec la parution en 1945, de Bonheur d'occasion les ecrivains canadien-francais commenceraient a s'interesser a la vie des ouvriers dans un milieu urbain.
Les romans moins nombreux qui traitaient de la vie dans les milieux agricoles après Trente Arpents arrivaient plus au moins aux memes conclusions que Ringuet.
May 5, 2011
Long winded, slow, and essentially, a farmer's tale. Only read this if you are researching Quebec and its history, writing a masters thesis on rural quebec, or have any desire to learn about Quebec. This is not a casual read, so be warned. It is a decent story, the story of a man, his thirty acres, his life, his love for the land, and his love for his children. It is a depiction on Rural Quebec, and the changes it goes through throughout the length of the novel. All be warned, this is not for the easily bored.
May 2, 2012
Oh mon Dieu, seigneur. Pire livre de littérature que j'ai du lire au Cegep. Tout le long j'attendais que quelque chose se passe, mais nada! J'ai fallis m'endormir environ 50 fois durant la lecture de ce livre, tellement il était ennuyeux. J'aimais pas non plus que les dialogues étaient écrit en "québécismes"... j'avais de la misère a comprendre les phrases des fois (et je parle en francais québécois!). Bref, j'suis bien contente d'en avoir fini. Ce livre mérite même pas 1 étoile; j'en donnerais 0 si c'était possible.
April 13, 2017
If only the entire novel was like the last part: hiver. I couldn't get through it, I couldn't relate to the characters at all. Only in the last part, hiver, you have a chance to understand Euchariste better. The way he's thrown into the world that feels so distant and hostile to him, his naive astonishment when he realises people don't speak French in White Falls, how he's a stranger to his own grandsons, and how he suffers being far away from his "trente arpents". It could be a really good book if only the remaining three parts were not so dull, bleak, and non-relatable.
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July 16, 2013"The narration then clumsily over-explains itself to the point of making the reader actually wince with embarrassment: 'It wasn’t that he was inhospitable; but, after all, the house was pretty small and two country appetites added to their own numerous family!' There may be some backwards bumpkin charm to writing like this — oh, that exclamation point, it hurts — but you’d never call it seduction."
Read more: http://ballastmag.com/2013/07/hello-g...
Read more: http://ballastmag.com/2013/07/hello-g...
February 9, 2019
Merci à l'acteur Pierre Lebeau qui a Dessine-moi un Dimanche a suggéré cette belle lecture du terroir. Oeuvre formidable qui témoigne tendrement de la vie de nos grands-pères. Amour de la terre et exode rural. Perte de repères... Ringuet est définitivement un (sinon le?) grand écrivain québécois d'antan.
August 12, 2011
A gut wrenching read. Poor guy works his whole life, under appreciated. If you want to feel better about your life, this should help.
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June 7, 2014ISBN: 0775504041; Fides, imprimé en 1978
April 7, 2019
This book influenced me to write my debut novel about my French Canadian family and their struggles with post Industrial REvolution in Canada and how although increased mobility in populations broke or severed family bonds, this never happened with my tribe. What a wonderful history of attitude and value changes within a dying agricultural society.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews