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Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal #5
Le Premier Quartier de la lune
Le roman commence "à la première seconde de l'été 52", et Marcel, le petit garçon de neuf ans qui en sera le héros, savoure avec délectation le début de cette saison pleine de promesses. Toute l'action du livre se déroule le 20 juin 1952 alors que, grimpé sur un toit de la rue Fabre, le fils de la grosse femme contemple le premier quartier de lune...
312 pages, Pocket Book
First published June 4, 1989
3 people are currently reading
124 people want to read
About the author
Michel Tremblay
137 books244 followersNé en 1942, Michel Tremblay grandit dans un appartement de Montréal où s'entassent plusieurs familles. Ses origines modestes marqueront d'ailleurs ses œuvres, souvent campées au cœur de la classe ouvrière, où misères sociale et morale se côtoient. En 1964, il participe au Concours des jeunes auteurs de Radio-Canada, avec une pièce de théâtre intitulée Le train, et remporte le premier prix. C'est à peine un an plus tard qu'il écrit l'une de ses œuvres majeures, Les belles-sœurs, dont le succès perdure. La pièce est jouée pour la première fois en 1968 au Théâtre du Rideau Vert.
Michel Tremblay est l'auteur d'un nombre considérable de pièces de théâtre, de romans, et d'adaptations d'œuvres d'auteurs et de dramaturges étrangers. On lui doit aussi quelques comédies musicales, des scénarios de films et un opéra. Ses univers sont peuplés de femmes, tantôt caractérielles et imparfaites, tantôt fragiles et attachantes, qu'il peint avec réalisme et humour. Vivant les difficultés du quotidien, ses personnages au dialecte coloré ont d'ailleurs contribué à introduire dans la dramaturgie et la littérature d'alors un niveau de langue boudé des artistes : le joual.
En 2006, il remporte le Grand Prix Metropolis bleu pour l'ensemble de son œuvre.
En 2017, le Prix Gilles-Corbeil lui est décerné pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre.
Michel Tremblay est l'auteur d'un nombre considérable de pièces de théâtre, de romans, et d'adaptations d'œuvres d'auteurs et de dramaturges étrangers. On lui doit aussi quelques comédies musicales, des scénarios de films et un opéra. Ses univers sont peuplés de femmes, tantôt caractérielles et imparfaites, tantôt fragiles et attachantes, qu'il peint avec réalisme et humour. Vivant les difficultés du quotidien, ses personnages au dialecte coloré ont d'ailleurs contribué à introduire dans la dramaturgie et la littérature d'alors un niveau de langue boudé des artistes : le joual.
En 2006, il remporte le Grand Prix Metropolis bleu pour l'ensemble de son œuvre.
En 2017, le Prix Gilles-Corbeil lui est décerné pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 21, 2017
This title translates into The First Quarter of the Moon," and I must admit that I tried to read it first in French, but then decided that the English translation would go much more smoothly. The novel, written by Quebecois writer/playwright Michel Tremblay, is fifth in a series of six novels, and takes place in a working class suburb of Montreal in 1952. It centers on a family tainted by incest and poverty, and follows tormented young Marcel during
one June day—the last day of school. The novel is less a tale for children than it is a psychological study of childhood escape into and green and growing place and the phenomenon that nature will nurture for only so long before the regenerative effect of the garden literally withers away or dissolves, thus thrusting the child forward into adulthood. Marcel, a 13-year-old epileptic and learning-disabled student, is rejected by his peers and is a source of shame to his family, including his gifted younger cousin who is unnamed in the novel and referred to only as the “fat woman’s son.” Marcel’s only source of acceptance and comfort is in a hideaway he calls the “enchanted forest,” which is really nothing more than a dark garden space in front of an abandoned house in his neighborhood that is filled with bleeding hearts and other flowers, but too dense for sunlight. For Marcel it is a magical place where dreams come true and he can converse with his imaginary friends, Duplessis, the cat in the garden, and four women, the three “knitters” (tricoteuses) Rose, Mauve, Violette and their mother Florence (names that are colors and flowers) in the house.
The fat woman’s son perceives that the enchanted forest has a some kind of mysterious effect on his cousin. “Marcel began disappearing around the middle of May, as soon as the buds had opened. He would set off on a Saturday morning with a jam sandwich and a half-pint of milk, and not come back till late afternoon, transformed, calmer, and almost a pleasure to be around.” Although Marcel is not involved as were Mary, Dickon, and Colin in The Secret Gardenand Peter in Tree for Peter in the actual tilling of the soil and encouraging plants to grow, he recognizes their restorative effect, if only a odd moments, on his tortured soul. When he is in the garden, “he went from the limited language he used at home and didn’t always take the trouble to enunciate properly, to a kind of poetry, primitive, colorful, that his cousin with his literary sensitivity found quite appealing—and envied him a little, too” (22).
When Marcel permits the fat woman’s son to visit the enchanted forest—unfortunately, just before the cousin is to take a battery of tests on the last day of school—it has a similar effect on the younger boy:
Bunches of bleeding hearts brushed your forehead: everything was on your back, delights: It was a flowery grave where you were cut off from everything and its charm was irresistible. Everything was pink and green, with little spots of blue when the wind blew and ruffled the diminutive grove. And then, you couldn’t help it, you lay possible here. Especially your wildest dreams (29).
If the fat women’s son is attuned to the magic of the enchanted forest, he realizes he cannot glean from it all he sees nor process it in the same creative way as does his cousin. The experience in the garden is so discombobulating that he blanks out on a test he must take that same afternoon. Furious with jealousy at one point, he considers destroying the enchanted forest, but knows it’s not the forest itself, but what is inside Marcel that makes the magic. The younger boy knows that his cousin only appears to be slow and dull to the rest of the world, and that this cave of bleeding hearts was the “only place outside of Florence’s house where Marcel’s genius could be expressed” (35), and that Marcel is, indeed, “one of the chosen” (152).
In his uniquely fertile imagination, Marcel feels the devotion of Duplessis, and the love and nurturing of Rose, Mauve, Violette and Florence, who give him piano and singing lessons, praise his original poetry, and exult in his constant successes, a marked contrast to the exclusion and derision he feels both at home and in school.
However, on this particular summer day during Marcel’s 14th year, the enchantment of his forest is fading quickly away. The epileptic, seemingly retarded boy has been marginalized rather than nurtured by his family, but on this day, his self-nurturing through fantasies in the garden is coming to an end. Even as Marcel shows the enchanted forest to his cousin on the fateful June morning, he sees there are “holes in Duplessis;” that is, the imaginary cat (based on a real animal that was killed by a dog when Marcel was three years old) is fading away in the garden before Marcel’s troubled eyes.
"As Dupelssis disappeared, as he lost contact with Rose, Violette, Mauve, and their mother, he’d started to doubt everything. Especially anything good . . .He remembered very clearly when it all began. Duplessis had developed his first holes and for days he hadn’t been treating Marcel very nicely. And his music lesson with Violette that afternoon had been a disaster (143).
In short, the “magic” in the garden (or enchanted forest) as well as in the house is deteriorating because its proprietor has come of the age when it should have already worked its charms and sent him on his way. Says Alain-Michel Rocheleau: “Peu à peu, le monde fantasmagorique où le jeune protagoniste se réfugiait cédera la place aux fantasmes sexuels de la puberté.” (“Little by little, the phantasmagoric world where the young protagonist has been taking refuge will cede its place to the sexual phantoms of puberty).” The realization of his emerging maturity and sexuality horrify Marcel, and he runs to the enchanted forest only to find Duplessis a mere shell of his former self, and Rose, Mauve, Violette and Florence all packing their bags for departure. Sadly these figures seem to realize their role is no longer to comfort, nourish, and praise the talents of an emerging adolescent. “All four women were standing around him now, so beautiful, so gentle. But all four had a helpless look that told him he would never again see even the tip of one of Duplessis’s ears. This really was the end of everything. The ceremony that marked the end of everything” (228).
In his anger and frustration, Marcel sets fire to the house behind the enchanted forest, but the flames are extinguished by firemen before they do much damage. At the novel’s end, the fat women’s son now imagines the two of them in a new place—himself curled up securely in the hollow of a crescent moon and Marcel dangling on the end, hooked on by the collar of his shirt that might tear at any moment” (240). Therefore, on the brink of adulthood, Marcel’s position is precarious. As he hangs on the crescent moon, which signals beginnings, without the garden and its nurturing figures to assuage him, it is evident he must now somehow spur himself into maturity without them, left alone to work whatever further “magic” he can.
one June day—the last day of school. The novel is less a tale for children than it is a psychological study of childhood escape into and green and growing place and the phenomenon that nature will nurture for only so long before the regenerative effect of the garden literally withers away or dissolves, thus thrusting the child forward into adulthood. Marcel, a 13-year-old epileptic and learning-disabled student, is rejected by his peers and is a source of shame to his family, including his gifted younger cousin who is unnamed in the novel and referred to only as the “fat woman’s son.” Marcel’s only source of acceptance and comfort is in a hideaway he calls the “enchanted forest,” which is really nothing more than a dark garden space in front of an abandoned house in his neighborhood that is filled with bleeding hearts and other flowers, but too dense for sunlight. For Marcel it is a magical place where dreams come true and he can converse with his imaginary friends, Duplessis, the cat in the garden, and four women, the three “knitters” (tricoteuses) Rose, Mauve, Violette and their mother Florence (names that are colors and flowers) in the house.
The fat woman’s son perceives that the enchanted forest has a some kind of mysterious effect on his cousin. “Marcel began disappearing around the middle of May, as soon as the buds had opened. He would set off on a Saturday morning with a jam sandwich and a half-pint of milk, and not come back till late afternoon, transformed, calmer, and almost a pleasure to be around.” Although Marcel is not involved as were Mary, Dickon, and Colin in The Secret Gardenand Peter in Tree for Peter in the actual tilling of the soil and encouraging plants to grow, he recognizes their restorative effect, if only a odd moments, on his tortured soul. When he is in the garden, “he went from the limited language he used at home and didn’t always take the trouble to enunciate properly, to a kind of poetry, primitive, colorful, that his cousin with his literary sensitivity found quite appealing—and envied him a little, too” (22).
When Marcel permits the fat woman’s son to visit the enchanted forest—unfortunately, just before the cousin is to take a battery of tests on the last day of school—it has a similar effect on the younger boy:
Bunches of bleeding hearts brushed your forehead: everything was on your back, delights: It was a flowery grave where you were cut off from everything and its charm was irresistible. Everything was pink and green, with little spots of blue when the wind blew and ruffled the diminutive grove. And then, you couldn’t help it, you lay possible here. Especially your wildest dreams (29).
If the fat women’s son is attuned to the magic of the enchanted forest, he realizes he cannot glean from it all he sees nor process it in the same creative way as does his cousin. The experience in the garden is so discombobulating that he blanks out on a test he must take that same afternoon. Furious with jealousy at one point, he considers destroying the enchanted forest, but knows it’s not the forest itself, but what is inside Marcel that makes the magic. The younger boy knows that his cousin only appears to be slow and dull to the rest of the world, and that this cave of bleeding hearts was the “only place outside of Florence’s house where Marcel’s genius could be expressed” (35), and that Marcel is, indeed, “one of the chosen” (152).
In his uniquely fertile imagination, Marcel feels the devotion of Duplessis, and the love and nurturing of Rose, Mauve, Violette and Florence, who give him piano and singing lessons, praise his original poetry, and exult in his constant successes, a marked contrast to the exclusion and derision he feels both at home and in school.
However, on this particular summer day during Marcel’s 14th year, the enchantment of his forest is fading quickly away. The epileptic, seemingly retarded boy has been marginalized rather than nurtured by his family, but on this day, his self-nurturing through fantasies in the garden is coming to an end. Even as Marcel shows the enchanted forest to his cousin on the fateful June morning, he sees there are “holes in Duplessis;” that is, the imaginary cat (based on a real animal that was killed by a dog when Marcel was three years old) is fading away in the garden before Marcel’s troubled eyes.
"As Dupelssis disappeared, as he lost contact with Rose, Violette, Mauve, and their mother, he’d started to doubt everything. Especially anything good . . .He remembered very clearly when it all began. Duplessis had developed his first holes and for days he hadn’t been treating Marcel very nicely. And his music lesson with Violette that afternoon had been a disaster (143).
In short, the “magic” in the garden (or enchanted forest) as well as in the house is deteriorating because its proprietor has come of the age when it should have already worked its charms and sent him on his way. Says Alain-Michel Rocheleau: “Peu à peu, le monde fantasmagorique où le jeune protagoniste se réfugiait cédera la place aux fantasmes sexuels de la puberté.” (“Little by little, the phantasmagoric world where the young protagonist has been taking refuge will cede its place to the sexual phantoms of puberty).” The realization of his emerging maturity and sexuality horrify Marcel, and he runs to the enchanted forest only to find Duplessis a mere shell of his former self, and Rose, Mauve, Violette and Florence all packing their bags for departure. Sadly these figures seem to realize their role is no longer to comfort, nourish, and praise the talents of an emerging adolescent. “All four women were standing around him now, so beautiful, so gentle. But all four had a helpless look that told him he would never again see even the tip of one of Duplessis’s ears. This really was the end of everything. The ceremony that marked the end of everything” (228).
In his anger and frustration, Marcel sets fire to the house behind the enchanted forest, but the flames are extinguished by firemen before they do much damage. At the novel’s end, the fat women’s son now imagines the two of them in a new place—himself curled up securely in the hollow of a crescent moon and Marcel dangling on the end, hooked on by the collar of his shirt that might tear at any moment” (240). Therefore, on the brink of adulthood, Marcel’s position is precarious. As he hangs on the crescent moon, which signals beginnings, without the garden and its nurturing figures to assuage him, it is evident he must now somehow spur himself into maturity without them, left alone to work whatever further “magic” he can.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 9, 2021
Chez Tremblay la vie est un calvaire sans résurrection. "Dans le premier quartier de la lune", il raconte les événements catastrophiques survenus aux trois garçons le 20 juin, la dernière journée de l'année scolaire.
Marcel, qui est épileptique en plus de présenter des problèmes des graves problèmes d'apprentissage perd ses chers amis imaginaires. Il devient fou et essaie de mettre feu à une maison. Son cousin, l'enfant de la grosse femme et alter ego de Tremblay constate qu'il est jaloux de Marcel et qu'il n'a plus les moyens de l'aimer. Claude Lemieux un ami des deux cousins apprend il va quitter le Plateau de Mont-Royal et qu'il fréquentera une nouvelle école au mois de Septembre. À la fin du roman les trois enfants son bien tristes et ils n'ont aucune raison d'espérer que les choses vont s'améliorer dans l'avenir.
Lors de sa sortie, on avait annoncé "Dans le premier quartier de la lune" serait le dernier tome du cycle des Chroniques du Plateau de Montréal. En effet, c'est un roman qui a les allures d'un point final. Néanmoins un sixième tome a vu le jour neuf ans après. Ce que m'inquiète c'est on que l'on prétend qu'il est même plus déprimant que celui-ci.
Marcel, qui est épileptique en plus de présenter des problèmes des graves problèmes d'apprentissage perd ses chers amis imaginaires. Il devient fou et essaie de mettre feu à une maison. Son cousin, l'enfant de la grosse femme et alter ego de Tremblay constate qu'il est jaloux de Marcel et qu'il n'a plus les moyens de l'aimer. Claude Lemieux un ami des deux cousins apprend il va quitter le Plateau de Mont-Royal et qu'il fréquentera une nouvelle école au mois de Septembre. À la fin du roman les trois enfants son bien tristes et ils n'ont aucune raison d'espérer que les choses vont s'améliorer dans l'avenir.
Lors de sa sortie, on avait annoncé "Dans le premier quartier de la lune" serait le dernier tome du cycle des Chroniques du Plateau de Montréal. En effet, c'est un roman qui a les allures d'un point final. Néanmoins un sixième tome a vu le jour neuf ans après. Ce que m'inquiète c'est on que l'on prétend qu'il est même plus déprimant que celui-ci.
August 10, 2015
Vraiment ordinaire - même un peu pire qu'ordinaire, parce que je me sentais un peu mal en lisant ça, tellement les personnages étaient malheureux et/ou frustrés. C'est sûr que les inventions de Marcel ont toujours été ce que j'aimais le moins dans cette série, encore moins que les folies d'Édouard (envers lequel je me sens plus indulgente depuis Des nouvelles d'Édouard), alors tout un livre qui tourne autour de ça, bof. (Même si ça fait que le livre rentre dans la catégorie "fantastique" du Grand défi!)
Les frustrations et la méchanceté de l'enfant de la grosse femme, la déchéance totale de Thérèse, la folie de Marcel, le désespoir d'Albertine... Une chance que la grosse femme était là pour apporter un baume sur le tout une fois de temps en temps.
Grand défi de littérature québécoise : Catégorie Fantastique. 3 points + 5 points bonus pour avoir fini la catégorie Littérature de l'imaginaire (total: 243 points).
Les frustrations et la méchanceté de l'enfant de la grosse femme, la déchéance totale de Thérèse, la folie de Marcel, le désespoir d'Albertine... Une chance que la grosse femme était là pour apporter un baume sur le tout une fois de temps en temps.
Grand défi de littérature québécoise : Catégorie Fantastique. 3 points + 5 points bonus pour avoir fini la catégorie Littérature de l'imaginaire (total: 243 points).
October 18, 2019
I love this series, though #5 is not as wonderful as #1-3.
“This was the first time he had seen her from the back when she thought she was alone. And she seemed surprisingly vulnerable in her blue and white polkadot dress... A good part of his own troubles, all dressed up and looking almost stylish, was walking towards Mont-Royal unaware that he was watching her, exquisitely fragile. Seen from this angle she was all in all an insignificant woman... no not insignificant — harmless: a full skirt swaying from side to side, a twitch in the right elbow because the purse kept getting in her way, her feet, unaccustomed to high heels, hesitating at the cracks in the sidewalk... He tilted his head onto his left shoulder and thought, You should always look at your troubles from behind.” p130-131
“Finally, the sheet of paper was set down in front of him. He closed his eyes, offered a short prayer of the kind in which you promise God you’ll behave yourself for the rest of your days if He grants what you want, took a deep breath...” p138
“She stood for a few moments without moving, then she resumed doing what she had done every day for more than 20 years: put the kettle on to boil, separated the cups and glasses from the plates, sprinkled some dish soap into the plastic dish pan (plastic was the one new thing that had come into the kitchen over the past three years: because everybody was talking about it, it was apparently the material of the future — Gabriel had brought some blue plastic glasses that tasted of blue plastic, red plastic plates that got scratched right away and that she wished she could throw in the garbage, and a green plastic dishpan that got soft when the water was too hot), waited at the stove swaying slowly till the water came to a boil.
She was 51 now, the age when her sisters had long since been grandmothers, the age when most women had already raise their families and now found themselves alone with her husband and bored. It’s true she had no time to get bored in this house that was always full of noise and activity and endless squabbles and reconciliations that were ever more tumultuous, but a tremendous dissatisfaction had been insinuating itself inside her for a while now. It seemed as if her two older sons didn’t want to leave home, to say nothing of getting married, though they both had good jobs and could have rented an apartment, cut once and for all the umbilical cord the tied them to her too closely, start a family, have children; as for the youngest whom she’d had, whom she’d wanted when she was past 40 and for whom she felt an irrational love, the way you love a grandchild in fact, his tremendous fragility worried her: Had she given birth to a feeble child because she no longer had the strength she’d had at 20 or 30 to raise him, to nudge him into life? She would be 60 years old when he was 20 and the thought depressed her. If Richard and Philippe persisted in not marrying, would she have to wait till she was an old woman to know her grandchildren? She saw herself spending the rest of her life washing red and blue plastic dishes for her children as they grow older and older, more and more dependent on her because never in a million years would they do a lick of housework, and she wanted to break everything. But the plastic dishes were unbreakable; apparently that was one of their great virtues.
The water started whistling in the kettle.
A lump came to her throat and helpless feeling that overwhelmed her more and more often crept into her somewhere around her heart. She put her hand on her forehead.
‘Is this all I’ve lived for?’
Then she heard the sound of sobbing from the bathroom and remembered that someone in this house, an adolescent who was insane, an unwanted child, a boy condemned to solitude, was living a tragedy far more horrible than hers.” p145-147
“His rage was so great, his jealousy so bitter, he thought he was going to die right then and there; such pain was unbearable and you could only die of it; your fist raised to heaven while blasphemy of unheard-of violence poured from you. If he had really known any blasphemies, genuine ones, the kind that insult the gods and make them leap from their thrones deep inside their seventh heaven or the final cavern of their hell, he would have stood up in the middle of the bushes, extended his arm, clinched his fist and howled hard enough to tear his throat a rosary, a novena, of those succulent and liberating words that relieve the soul for a brief moment while smearing those who’d had the bad taste to create us.” p153
“This was the first time he had seen her from the back when she thought she was alone. And she seemed surprisingly vulnerable in her blue and white polkadot dress... A good part of his own troubles, all dressed up and looking almost stylish, was walking towards Mont-Royal unaware that he was watching her, exquisitely fragile. Seen from this angle she was all in all an insignificant woman... no not insignificant — harmless: a full skirt swaying from side to side, a twitch in the right elbow because the purse kept getting in her way, her feet, unaccustomed to high heels, hesitating at the cracks in the sidewalk... He tilted his head onto his left shoulder and thought, You should always look at your troubles from behind.” p130-131
“Finally, the sheet of paper was set down in front of him. He closed his eyes, offered a short prayer of the kind in which you promise God you’ll behave yourself for the rest of your days if He grants what you want, took a deep breath...” p138
“She stood for a few moments without moving, then she resumed doing what she had done every day for more than 20 years: put the kettle on to boil, separated the cups and glasses from the plates, sprinkled some dish soap into the plastic dish pan (plastic was the one new thing that had come into the kitchen over the past three years: because everybody was talking about it, it was apparently the material of the future — Gabriel had brought some blue plastic glasses that tasted of blue plastic, red plastic plates that got scratched right away and that she wished she could throw in the garbage, and a green plastic dishpan that got soft when the water was too hot), waited at the stove swaying slowly till the water came to a boil.
She was 51 now, the age when her sisters had long since been grandmothers, the age when most women had already raise their families and now found themselves alone with her husband and bored. It’s true she had no time to get bored in this house that was always full of noise and activity and endless squabbles and reconciliations that were ever more tumultuous, but a tremendous dissatisfaction had been insinuating itself inside her for a while now. It seemed as if her two older sons didn’t want to leave home, to say nothing of getting married, though they both had good jobs and could have rented an apartment, cut once and for all the umbilical cord the tied them to her too closely, start a family, have children; as for the youngest whom she’d had, whom she’d wanted when she was past 40 and for whom she felt an irrational love, the way you love a grandchild in fact, his tremendous fragility worried her: Had she given birth to a feeble child because she no longer had the strength she’d had at 20 or 30 to raise him, to nudge him into life? She would be 60 years old when he was 20 and the thought depressed her. If Richard and Philippe persisted in not marrying, would she have to wait till she was an old woman to know her grandchildren? She saw herself spending the rest of her life washing red and blue plastic dishes for her children as they grow older and older, more and more dependent on her because never in a million years would they do a lick of housework, and she wanted to break everything. But the plastic dishes were unbreakable; apparently that was one of their great virtues.
The water started whistling in the kettle.
A lump came to her throat and helpless feeling that overwhelmed her more and more often crept into her somewhere around her heart. She put her hand on her forehead.
‘Is this all I’ve lived for?’
Then she heard the sound of sobbing from the bathroom and remembered that someone in this house, an adolescent who was insane, an unwanted child, a boy condemned to solitude, was living a tragedy far more horrible than hers.” p145-147
“His rage was so great, his jealousy so bitter, he thought he was going to die right then and there; such pain was unbearable and you could only die of it; your fist raised to heaven while blasphemy of unheard-of violence poured from you. If he had really known any blasphemies, genuine ones, the kind that insult the gods and make them leap from their thrones deep inside their seventh heaven or the final cavern of their hell, he would have stood up in the middle of the bushes, extended his arm, clinched his fist and howled hard enough to tear his throat a rosary, a novena, of those succulent and liberating words that relieve the soul for a brief moment while smearing those who’d had the bad taste to create us.” p153
September 18, 2022
Un assez bon roman qui plonge dans l'univers nébuleux et lointain de l'enfance.
March 1, 2025
Récit du passage de l’enfance à l’adolescence. Mon 2e pref des Chroniques du Plateau après La grosse femme.
January 9, 2026
abondance de larmes et de douceur
March 6, 2023
De retour chez nous avec mon personnage préféré des Chroniques, l'incomparable Marcel. Sa peine pour Duplessis et les tricoteuses qui le laissent m'a ému par moments, ainsi que toutes les grandes émotions vécues par Bartine et l'enfant de la grosse femme en particulier. J'adore!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 31, 2015
So far for me this has been the weakest link in the Mont Royal Chronicles series (I am yet to read the last novel). In general I have only tolerated the 3 knitters and their mother throughout the series, but here this storyline comes up front and in addition the Peter Pan character is introduced which is completely out of place here. For some reason the ghost cat Duplessis does not bother me that much, perhaps because it is an incarnation of a once real character which has played an important emotional role in the series. I understand very well the point Tremblay is making, I just don't like the means he is using.
What I like about this book is that it attempts to look at the close (literally family) relationship between talent and madness, personified by the son of the fat woman and his cousin Marcel. Tremblay knows that those two (talent and madness) are very close and at the same time very different and despite their affinity and desperate mutual attraction one can never enter the territory of the other although they can nurture each other.
What I like about this book is that it attempts to look at the close (literally family) relationship between talent and madness, personified by the son of the fat woman and his cousin Marcel. Tremblay knows that those two (talent and madness) are very close and at the same time very different and despite their affinity and desperate mutual attraction one can never enter the territory of the other although they can nurture each other.
December 20, 2019
After focusing solely on the gay uncle Edouard in his previous novel, Michel Tremblay leaves him out of the fifth book in his sexology "Chronique du Plateau Mont-Royal." His presence is missed, though Tremblay has more than enough to handle as he focuses on the coming of age of Edouard's niece, Therese, and his nephews, Marcel and the fat woman's unnamed son (a thinly veiled portrait of Tremblay). With puberty, Marcel is losing touch with his visions while his older sister is stuck in a dead-end waitress job after having dropped out of school. At the same time, their mother, Albertine, tries to find some kind of joy in her dismal existence now that World War II has left her a widow. The character drawing remains incisive, but the growing sense of melancholy and frustration are starting to take over what was once a hopeful series. After this novel, you might wish to read the play "Marcel Pursued by Hounds" for another view of the character's loss of his spiritual connection.
January 26, 2023
Tome 5 des Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal.
La chute de Marcel
La chute de Marcel
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