À la fin ils ont dit à tout le monde d’aller se rhabiller

by Laurence Leduc-Primeau

Du toit, j’aperçois des bateaux dans le port, des gratte-ciel, des colonnes de voitures empêtrées. Mais je ne vois pas les fourmis ni les enfants qui pleurent. Il faut que je me contente d’imaginer qu’il y a plus d’aimés qui se retrouvent que de veuves obèses qui se coupent les doigts par distraction.

Il y a beaucoup de choses qu’on dit, dans la vie, qui ne s’avèrent pas vraies.

À la fin ils ont dit à tout le monde d’aller se rhabiller est un récit d’errance, oscillant entre la vacuité maussade de l’existence et sa beauté incongrue, surgie de nulle part au détour d’une rue inventée d’Amérique du Sud.

224 pages, Paperback

Published April 1, 2016

About the author

Laurence Leduc-Primeau a publié Lettre à Benjamin (2021), Zoologies (2018), À la fin ils ont dit à tout le monde d’aller se rhabiller (2016), ainsi que des nouvelles.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Laurence Leduc-Primeau was born and raised in Montreal. She is interested in intimacy and cracks in the real, tries to believe in magic.” So says the tiny bio over at Gallimard’s website. It could easily be talking about the heroine of her first novel, Chloé Duclos, a young woman who, for us (and, for much of the time, herself), exists only in the present.

Her backstory is almost non-existent but a few things can be gleaned: she has relocated from Quebec in Canada to an unnamed Spanish-speaking country most likely in South America; she has come alone; she is at least fifteen—

      The key he hands me weighs four tons. An old-timey key like in the movies, made for opening treasure chests. I go in. He looks at the state of my clothes and lends me a T-shirt. In it, I’m fifteen.

—but, later, we discover she’s older which makes more sense but I would’ve liked to know that sooner because it paints a whole different picture; she has attempted suicide—

      Adriana’s making out with a new boy in the living room. Her nails blood red. Red like the scar that’s still on the inside of my wrist.
      That’s not true. It isn’t red like blood or red like her nails. It’s white.
      White and smooth. But I still see it as red, as though it hadn’t healed at all since that afternoon. The day I squeezed a tourniquet around my arm and opened it with a box cutter. I had this deep conviction that it wouldn’t bleed. Blood is for the living.

—but we never learn why because Chloé never talks about the past and no one seems to be interested in asking pertinent questions or if they (they probably do) they’re asked off-page.

In a Q&A masquerading as an interview Laurence talks about the main theme of the book, culture shock:

      This book was built, from its first iteration, around the idea of being uprooted as a revelation—or an amplification—of the self. Exploring what the foreign makes possible; this exacerbation of emotions, once the reference points, the routine, the known, vanish. Liberated—or ripped—from these bonds that make up daily life (and regulate it, delineate it), Chloé, left to her own devices, lives each banality, each event, more intensely. Her internal state becomes more clearly visible, more easily explorable. We might even say that it takes up all the space.
      The culture shock exposes and rips open what the familiar has allowed us to camouflage over time. From oneself, from others. Madness, suffering, and fear, notably. But also what keeps art, friendship, and curiosity alive. We could ask ourselves if Chloé is running from herself or if she is running from the relationships and obligations that, precisely, prevent her from finding herself, by creating a space free of expectations where she can process her trauma. – QC FICTION

It doesn’t explain why following the trauma in her past she would set out on a journey that was guaranteed to exacerbate her feelings of depression and loneliness although if we treat the whole book as a metaphor it makes sense:

Everyone’s crazy here. That’s why I came.

Having been depressed for lengthy periods I know only too well how hard it is to communicate with those around me and the idea of talking to a stain on the wall (whom Chloé names Betty) or a dog (who remains unnamed for the length of the book) makes total sense to me.

Clowndog, Kloundog, Klog, Clawg. Conedog, Cog, Coggie? I’ll come up with a name for you one of these days.

The not dwelling on the past I don’t get so much. I get not wanting to dwell on the past but I don’t get how she manages it.

What most readers, including myself, have struggled with is the broken narrative. From one vignette—can’t really call them chapters—to the next you’ve no idea where you are in relation to what you’ve just read. You could be in the same scene or later on or somewhere else or (rarely) back in the past. I get why the author would choose to do this but I didn’t like it and I think more is lost than gained. Same with the quotation marks or, to be clear, the lack thereof; never going to give in of that one.

This isn’t the hardest book to read but that doesn’t make it an easy read especially when the sections are so short, occasionally only a couple of lines, and then you’re off God alone know where. On the plus side this is quite an effective character study and not without humour, often self-deprecating. As depressed as I’ve been I’ve never lost my sense of humour, if anything it was sharpened.

The ending will likely be the thing that disappoints most readers because although we’re willing to wade through all kinds of shit we really don’t like to be short-changed at the end and that’s what happens here:

You’re not gonna open it? Emilio hands me the envelope from across the room, shakes it. A padded brown envelope. With a lot of stamps. A mischievous look on his face, Chloé, you have mail. How is that possible? Something overwhelming comes over me, a mix of too much of everything. I’m suddenly in another room far far away from here. Headrush, I need to sit down.

No, we never find out what’s in the envelope and half a dozen pages later the book just stops. Does it matter how she got there, to South America I mean, or why she chose there or what happened back in Canada? In the end all a lost person really need is to be found. And does Chloé find herself? In the end she finds something if only in the palm of her hand:

A lot of lines, that’s a good sign. Success in these curves. Some crosses, but nothing too bad. A long life line here, deep. Look, all full of—what would you like your life to be full of?

[Maude Fleurent · Rating 3 out of 5]

« Amour était le pire de tous les mots. Celui qui ne pardonne pas. Celui qu’il faut éviter à tout prix si on tient à sa vie. »

Un livre sans réelle réponse qui explore tout ce qui est autour et où il faut lire entre les lignes mais personne ne saura jamais la vrai vérité.

[Émile Brassard-Gourdeau · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai beaucoup aimé le style, direct et simple, les phrases coup de poing qui demandent immédiatement à être relues. Individuellement, chaque page est vraiment une réussite.

Sur l'ensemble, j'ai par contre trouvé le rythme un peu trop lent, statique. La progression de la protagoniste est presque inexistante pendant une bonne moitié du livre, ce qui fait que plusieurs des scènes semblent se répéter. Cela fait partie du propos, en quelque sorte, mais ne contribue pas à mon avis à l'expérience du lecteur.

Au bout du compte, une plume très intéressante soutient une trame narrative qui l'est moins, ce qui en fait une oeuvre agréable à lire amis qui ne remplit pas la promesse des premières pages.

[James Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've reviewed all of QC Fiction's books, and this one was the most inaccessible one, at least for me. A woman, Chloe Duclos goes to Columbia for a "psychological holiday" but she never sees a psychologist or psychoanalyst. She lives in a sort of hostel with Betty, a stain on the wall that she communicates with. Sort of. She does make friends and even learns Spanish. I recommend reading it in one sitting to get the whole scope of Chloe's experience. You may not understand it, but you'll have read something quite different than anything you've read before!

[Sarah Jeane · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'adore les éditions de ta mère ! Ce livre avait une écriture originale. J'ai bien aimé en général

[Laure · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dans À la fin ils ont dit à tout le monde d’aller se rhabiller, on ne sait pas pourquoi Chloé s’évade en Amérique latine Il existe plein de raisons pour tourner le dos à quelque chose, ça pourrait être la même que la vôtre. En tout cas, Chloé refuse de nous donner des motifs, de faire partie d’un récit. Elle passe son temps à....

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