Sing, Nightingale

by Marie Hélène Poitras, Rhonda Mullins (Translator)

Peter Greenaway meets Angela Carter: a Gothic tale of secrets and revenge

Beneath the bright sky of Noirax lies a long tradition of secrets. Generations of men on the Malmaison estate have fathered countless children, both legitimate and not. The women all meet tragic ends or live in the shadows of the estate, and the illegitimate offspring are cared for by nursemaids or sent off to orphanages.

Right now the estate is quiet. But the son is returning home, and the father, worried that the land has been less generous with its sumptuous offerings, decides to bring in a whisperer to make the plants and animals grow. But this whisperer awakens the past. The generations of silenced women will begin to make their voices heard, and the violence lurking under the lush perfumes of the forest will make itself known. The hunters will be hunted and the wolves will howl an announcement of a new reign.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gothic, Fantasy, Audiobook, Canada, Novella

176 pages, Paperback

First published April 5, 2021

Reviews

[Emmeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Many books claim to be like Angela Carter; few actually evoke her fairytale-esque darkness. Poitras's novel of family dysfunction in the French countryside comes closer than most, perhaps because the fairy tales are right at the surface, as the text is interspersed throughout with French country songs and nursery rhymes. There are also detailed, immersive descriptions of food and cookery, with pheasants and fruit frequently deployed through the pages in still life formations.

There's a lovely murky dark atmosphere in the early sections, and I relaxed into it. Sadly, the story it too weak for all these theatrics: it is a fairly typical feminist response to the kind of atmosphere it has evoked (taken advantage of?). A young woman comes to a lonely manner, which seems only half-real, half cardboard set. A man and his son are the last survivors of generations of tyrannical men. She will set about showing them what's what. Too simplistic for me. I remain captivated by the songs however.

[Azhar · Rating 3 out of 5]

don’t ask me what the fuck happens in this book bc i won’t be able to tell you but i had a good time? so eerie and foreboding.

[Ian Mond]

A sumptuous and sensual gothic novel overflowing with sex, secrets, incest and violence. Like all good gothic fiction, the action centres on a mansion named Malmaison, where the “fathers”, the patriarchs who have run the estate for many generations, have quenched their sexual desires without any thoughts of the consequences. The fecund prose, laced with French and Quebecian songs and fairytales, is visceral as it is beautiful. It’s very much a story of women who have been silenced, finally finding a voice, a means of expression that shines a light on the abuse, both sexual and physical, committed by the fathers. Sometimes the story gets a little too meta-textual, but it’s only a minor issue. This is a strong example of the new gothic.

[Christine Bergeron · Rating 5 out of 5]

J’ai franchement pris le temps de déguster l’univers singulier, inquiétant et captivant de La désidérata. Mon amour pour les mots à été servi; la plume fine et musicale de Marie-Hélène Poitras rend ce récit éclatant en mettant de l’avant des personnages aussi sombres qu’étranges qui stagnent dans un environnement macabre et sans âge. Ponctué de références sinistres à des comptines enfantines tout sauf anodines, ce récit d’une famille atypique est empreint d’égoïsme, de vengeance et de funestes secrets fascinants et envoûtants.

[Aude · Rating 3 out of 5]

La Désidérata, c’est un livre qui nous plonge dans un conte étrange.

Un conte dans lequel les femmes qui entretiennent des liaisons avec les pères du domaine De La Malmaison ont un destin tragique, funeste.

Le mystère entourant ce domaine et la famille qui y habite depuis des générations est envoûtant. Le secret si bien enfoui, nous garde captif jusqu’à la fin.

C’est un livre dans lequel l’autrice joue avec l’imaginaire. Elle nous fait naviguer dans un espace temps indéterminé. Elle inclut aisément des comptines pour enfants dans l’histoire. Ces comptines qui perdent toute leur innocence. Laissant place à quelque chose de sombre, angoissant.

C’est magnifiquement bien écrit.

Une belle découverte mais sans plus pour moi malheureusement.

[endrju · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting. I can't stand these allegorical narratives that pose relations between humans (or between humans and non-humans) as some ahistorical or transhistorical fact. It perhaps makes for a certain kind of literature, especially if the language is flowery as it is in this case, but it speaks of nothing but of author's desire to cling to some Truth. IMHO, the novel's feminist message would've worked much better if placed in particular time and place, like for example Tokarczuk's Empuzjon. The critique then bites much better and much harder.

[Natalie Meagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this felt as if I’d been dropped into the middle of an already formed story where I was expected to just know what was going on and who everyone was. I stuck with it thinking the pieces would start to fall into place the more I read but that just never happened. I was lost the whole time.

I enjoyed the French translations and the writing style as a whole but if you asked me to tell you what happened in this book, I couldn’t.

[Francis Leclerc · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'adorais Marie-Hélène Poitras, et je l'adore encore plus après ce livre. Son habileté avec les mots, son chant lexical tenu d'un bout à l'autre du livre, son rythme, sa façon de raconter et de tenir en haleine. Parfois on peut être confus en ayant l'impression d'être dans l'ancien temps, pour finalement être dans une époque moderne, ce qui peut être voulu par l'auteur; mais ce serait mon seul bémol.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

|| SING NIGHTINGALE ||
#gifted/@coachhousebooks
✍🏻
A quirky, fantastical tale, with the most stunning cover!

It has been a while since I endulged in an atmospheric, gothic story and SING NIGHTINGALE was just the ticket! Wonderfully translated, It's sensual yet violent, haunting yet immersive, a modern Quebecois fairy tale. I was bewitched from the first few pages, Marie Hélène Poitras's writing is rich and pitch perfect as we become pulled into this dark story. With themes of feminism, LGBTQ, migled with fairy tale and staying true to ones self.
This would be great for fans of Angela Carter and Helen Oyeyemi.

For more of my book content check out instagram.com/bookalong

[David Germain · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai adoré! Quand on entre dans cette histoire, c'est comme être dans un univers parallèle, un peu un miroir grosissant de notre époque, avec une impression d'être à la fois dans le passé et dans le présent, avec une dose d'horeur. J'ai adoré le niveau de langue et les choix de mots (roussepinette, j'adore!).

[Jacinthe Crête · Rating 4 out of 5]

On dirait que je me réveille d'un fever dream. J'ai rien compris, mais j'ai aimé ça !

[Leah M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to libro.fm for providing me with an ALC of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review.

This was the kind of book that sounded really good in the blurb, but it simply didn't come through in execution. I had no idea what I was reading, and even after finishing, I still couldn't tell you what the story is actually about. By the time I realized that this was a book to DNF, I was almost done with the story, and figured I could just wait out the 23 minutes left in the story since it was such a short one. However, I was disappointed when the last half hour of the book didn't really clarify anything and didn't leave me with any revelations that explained what this was about. You know those books that you read and still can't explain a single thing about, even immediately after reading, just because there's nothing identifiable or memorable about them? Yeah, that's this one.

[Coralie Potvin]

Très belle oeuvre écoféministe québécoise ; s'y mélangent la terre et ses semences/fruits, les écoulements corporaux et le genre. Récit enflammant qui invite à la révolution, témoignages touchants de personnages fictifs proches de la représentation. On ne nait pas femme, on le devient, mais le corps demeure un vaisseau très tangible de réalités féminines.
Belle réflexion sur l'écriture et l'Histoire, d'une plume qui chante la moitié du temps, et qui danse l'autre. Réécrire l'Histoire pour rendre justice. L'écriture au dépend du patriarcat et au nom de l'écoféminisme.

[Krista B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh wow. I'm not actually sure what I just read. I have so many questions. Gothic "horror" is about the closest genre I can place this one under, though it's horror in an untraditional sense. The prose was beautiful, the plot disturbing. I'm glad I read it, but not looking for anything like it again any time soon....

[Sylvie Flament · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entre fable, chanson et plaidoyer pour femmes, un livre étrange, étonnant et gourmand, très agréable à lire. Peu habituel.

[Evelyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

"In the forest, under the thick carpet of immaculate velvet, are buried the roots of holy herbs, carcasses of donkeys, the body of a woman, and a secret never told.

2.5? Reading the book my mind was constantly going "What is going on here?????" By the end, I get it, despite some elements still not fully explained, but I don't know... I don't think I liked it all that much.

The beginning drops you into a story that's already begun, and you're left to observe and try and piece things together. That's not so bad, but it takes a while for things to click. The men in this story are... absolutely filthy men. This book has a lot of sex, it is completely preoccupied with sex, and gross men sexualizing women (tw for rape, not all the sex here is consensual), but it's all for a purpose... more or less. This book definitely had more details than I would have liked, honestly. Does the message of the book really need all the wanking and moaning? The purpose of the story is to shine a light on the women written out of the family's history, all to cover for the filthy men at the head. Once you get further in some pieces begin to slide together that give the story more clarity, but by the end there are still some elements that are left unexplained and fantastical. A weird, eerie tale indeed - emphasis on the weird.

I liked how the text was interspersed with French and Quebecois children's songs - a lot were actually familiar to me from my own childhood here in Canada! Alouette, gentille alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai~ It was interesting the way they were used here to add more meaning to the events happening. I've also realized while reading this book and seeing these songs translated, I was singing a lot of songs that are actually pretty dark lol!

I'm not wholly on-board with the meta narration choice that often called attention to this story taking place on a stage with a set etc.
Do they know that they are characters in a play, made of paper, ink, and pixels? That their destiny weighs heavily, but that they have no shadow? That Noirax is trapped in a novel, that they are living a still life? That the story is starting to fall apart?
I understand the effect that the author was going for, but I don't think it was executed in a way that I could appreciate all the time. I don't need sections starting by noting the new stage set. It just felt like often the writing made strange choices... and often made the characters and set feel hazy, like I couldn't quite touch or understand them. I don't want to be too harsh though because the story itself is supposed to be wholly strange to witness and sometimes the narration style did add to that, and also this is a translation and the original French used a lot of old French words and leaned on French allusions that are probably very hard to carry over completely to English.

[Bodine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a lovely, peculiar tale. It makes me wish I could read French and knew French culture, because the translator's note says much was lost because there were no English equivalents for the children's songs that were used, etcetera.

It's funny, because this book is thematically somewhat similar to Weyward, which I've just finished and strongly disliked. Again, we have a father who must have the woman he desires, even if the woman in question wastes away in the unhappy marriage. We have a lineage of women who are connected to nature at a slightly magical level. We have women who rebel against their fathers and overpower them, taking charge of their own lives despite the fathers contrary intentions.

However, this novel doesn't preach. Aliénor and Victoire have not become whiny little bitches; they are strong, smart women whose past suffering is but a footnote. The father is overthrown but he gets to remain at home, where he can cook for his daughters. The wounds inflicted upon him were likely never there - he just hallucinated them because of the mushrooms. So he did not come to any permanent harm.

Also, the father was clearly, actually wrong. Violet's father in Weyward was arguably not wrong, but simply judging by different moral standards, pride and status, which is not necessarily wrong. Bernard on the other hand, fathers legions of daughters on all his concubines and leaves the infants in the woods to be eaten by wolves. That sounds much more decidedly wrong to me. And yet - the surviving daughters all find it in their hearts to forgive him, once he has repented for his sins. They reverse the power structure within Malmaison (I know just enough French to appreciate this term), making the father their servant, and that is revenge enough. Also, not all men in this novel are bad, which is fair, because they aren't.

Most importantly, though, the writing in this book is excuisite. It's a proper fairytale. It makes you read carefully because half the stuff that is happening is another mushroom trip. It's a little bit like Lost in the Garden in that sense, I suppose. Proper magical realism. I think I'll re-read this one and enjoy it even more the second time around.

[AK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Real rating: 3.5 stars

I don't read a lot of gothic novels, I was mostly sold by the cover of this book, so I don't really have a measure for how this story compares to others.

The prose is very visceral - it digs deep and pulls out the roots of the characters - with haunting metaphors and eerie poetry and song inserts, the story paints a dark picture of this mansion's history.

There are some meta elements - a narrator of sorts, the concept of the mansion and its players being a stage or a set of sorts, the existence of books and stories and lives. There's a bit of questioning around everything that adds a little something extra on top that makes you feel fully enraptured, while also being removed from the narrative itself. The juxtaposition is an interesting choice.

As a whole, this story was a feminist call to never settle - to fight and be heard, to defy. It was also a lot more sexual and dark in some respect than I had expected (again, not normally into gothic stories, I had no clue what to expect really). Lots of TWs, but I do think this book is an interesting time.

TW: Sexual assault, rape, murder, injury/injury detail, incest, grief, drug use, death, suicide, sexual violence, blood, animal death, animal cruelty, alcohol, abandonment, child abuse, pregnancy, implied transphobia; mentions infidelity and confinement

Plot: 3.5/5
Characters: 3.5/5
World Building: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Pacing: 4.5/5
Overall: 3.5/5

eARC and finished copy gifted by Coach House Books in exchange for an honest review.

[Nafisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recommended this by a bookseller whom I asked for something translated and strange. Check and check.

The gothic elements work quite well here in this revenge tale of women forcefully taking back a narrative they have shaped, but have been left out of, uncountable violences done to them. I am still new to exploring CanLit, so forgive me if such a tradition already exists outside my reading horizons, but this book could make a good case for a Quebecois Gothic, similar to America's Southern Gothic. In her excellent book, Darkly: Blackness and America's Gothic Soul, author Leila Taylor talks about the inextricable link between American Southern Gothic and Black history: how Black people are alternately the ghouls, the victims, as well as the skeleton in the closet of America's twisted history through the atrocities of enslavement, the Jim Crow era, and right through to the systemic injustices present in today's society. In a comparable way, this book feels like it uses a similar definition and subversion of the gothic from the lens of gender and gendered violence in the French(/)Quebecois countryside (which is where I interpreted this fictional town to be located).

There is some beautiful language, but sometimes the description does get too decadent, like biting into a stick of butter. Unlike some other reviewers, I did really enjoy the meta-textual elements and wished this had been leaned into even more. An unpopular opinion I am sure, and one that could only come from a writer who reads.

[Jean-Daniel Larivière · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’histoire de La désidérata se déroule dans un petit village de campagne à une époque indéterminée: je me sentais tantôt au Moyen Âge, tantôt au XIXe siècle. Le domaine de la Malmaison est au cœur de cette histoire de vengeance dans laquelle les secrets sont révélés au compte-gouttes. Au fil des générations, des pères se sont succédés à la tête du domaine, cachant aux regards tout un pan de leur histoire familiale. Plusieurs personnages féminins forts seront révélés au fil de l’histoire, déstabilisant le père en ébranlant ses convictions et sa quête de pouvoir, tout en libérant la parole des femmes qui ont été écartées.

L’écriture de Marie-Hélène Poitras est impressionnante! Les descriptions sont somptueuses et le vocabulaire luxuriant est extrêmement soigné, surtout pour ce qui touche les aliments. De plus, une ambiance étrange et un univers inquiétant de non-dits familiaux se dégagent de l’histoire. La désidérata me rappelle d’ailleurs l’ambiance d’ouvrages tels La dévoration des fées, de Catherine Lalonde, Matrix, d’Helen Groff et Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel, de Marie-Claire Blais.

J’ai aimé la lecture déstabilisante de La désidérata. Il s’agit d’une lecture plus costaude que ne le laissait présager l’épaisseur du livre! Finalement, je vous encourage à écouter l’épisode de la balado Le boudoir des littéraires, qui est animé par Myriam Comtois et qui est consacré à Marie-Hélène Poitras, si vous voulez en apprendre plus son univers et ses différents livres.

[Andy Weston · Rating 4 out of 5]

The events of the novel that take place in the village of Noirax are presented as a cardboard puppet theatre, with the dark surrounding forest, and the estate house of Malmaison close by.

Malmaison is the is the home of the ‘father’, from a long line of fathers. He lives alone, widowed, with the house falling apart around him. He has respect in the village, in his own mind at least, and has female callers, though any relationship is distant.

His routine is interrupted by the return of his son, Jeanty, fleeing a catastrophic relationship, and of Alienor, an enchanting young woman whose mission is to bring the estate back to life.

But Malmaison has a dark history. Generations of women have come to tragic ends here, the mothers and wives and mistresses, and to their children. Aliénor gradually gets closer to the truth, as the family undergoes changes, some quite bizarre.

To best appreciate this very quirky and often fantastical story, it is best to read it as one might with a fairy tale. Consider it, as Poitras suggests at the opening of each chapter, as that cardboard puppet theatre set in the forest, with a subversive charm with an enduring quality, twisted and haunting, and yet bewitching.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A father salivates in the privilege of his forebears. A son suffers from the restraint placed on her true self. And all comes to light as a young woman alights on their traditional land seeking answers. Sing, Nightingale runs like a sensuous film of vignettes, verdant in description, with a spring sun casting a haze over the scene. But underneath it is an undercurrent of unease. "Father" in particular feels like a hunter, a waiting predator, viewing women and land like a doe to be plucked. Sex, incest, and hunting are all spoken of with vividness, but only ever briefly. Aliénor refuses to play the part of the désidérata like those before her. Poitras digs up the issue of inherited trauma by having the characters peel back the layers of art, peek behind the curtain, and write their own stories. Stories, rhymes, and folktales play an integral role, as a number of excerpts are incorporated. These Quebec songs and works include both the original French, and an English translation. All are cited in the back. Like nursery rhymes, these appear innocent, but hide a grim truth. Overall this is a powerful reminder to use one's own words to reclaim your world.

[Beas Chattaraj · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a weird one. When I saw the blurb it intrigued me. Malmaison is an estate with a bloody past. And all the blood and tears that have been shed, they belonged to women wronged and abused by the men of the estate over generations in the name of love, lust and greed. Alienor is the one who will bring a storm into this cursed place and free the trapped souls and rewrite the history of the place.
.
Audiobooks are always a hit or a miss for me. There's no in between. This did not make it. As much as the tale intrigued me, I couldn't immerse myself in its atmosphere. The narration was okay, could have been more dramatic in my opinion. I have read strange gothic novels before, but it was a bit difficult to concentrate on this book. There was this foreboding akin to the Plain Bad Heroines, simmering rage of the Angela Carter stories and yet something was missing. Would I like it better if I read it? I don't know. Check it out if dark gothic tales of revenge interlaced with magic is your thing.
Thank you @librofm for the ALC.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though I'd not had any context for this peculiar novel when I picked it up, the allusion to Peter Greenaway in the marketing material is, well, it's legit.

I loved loved loved Greenaway as a twentysomething filmgoer. Lush and gothic, portentous and wildly stylized, Poitras does indeed write as he filmed. Her prose is visceral, decadent, and more than a bit trippy, in a psilocybin sort of way. Meaning organic, oversaturated and nonlinear, the narrative shifting before your eyes and under your feet.

Enjoyable for a while, and then you're ready to be done with it. Whimsy and playfulness eventually gives way to claustrophobia and a scrabble for reassuring coherence.

Which one finds by skimming to the end, and closing the book. Intriguing, entertaining, and a bit too much, like being handed an entire bowl of dark chocolate ganache.

[Sophie Torris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dans le village de Noirax, la Malmaison et plus particulièrement sa maison aux parfums a, depuis plusieurs générations, abrité quelques drames adultères et familiaux. En effet, chacun des pères Berthoumieux est responsable de la mort tragique de sa "désidérata". Le dernier en date et son fils, Jeanty en quête de son genre, pleurent encore Pampelune, quand deux femmes, Victoire, la bougresse et Alienor, arrivent au domaine pour changer le cours des choses. Ça fait penser à un conte médiéval semant de ci-de là quelques anachronismes, conte merveilleux et noir tout à la fois, très sensoriel, peuplé de Barbe-bleue et de Blanche-Neige, essaimant ça et là des comptines d'antan qui sonnent comme autant de sombres prédictions. Quant à l'écriture, elle se déguste!

[annie cathie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I had read the book physically rather than an audiobook because I had difficulty keeping up with what was happening. There is a lot of changing of subjects, and long sections about backstory or lore that can get confusing since I can’t go back and read it myself. Over all, though, the writing style was nice and I enjoyed the basis of it. This is a type of book that, at least for ppl with adhd who struggle with listening like me, you’d benefit from having the text in front of you so that you don’t get lost. I’d like to read this physically someday so that im able to rate it more accurately.

[Priya · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do know this is a translated piece so some meaning may have been lost in translation...

The concept of this story was beautiful, but executed in a way that just ... didn't work? It felt as if you had to write it to know how to read it. It was as if the story I was reading had already begun and I was expected to just know everything? It has some nice moments, and the narrative style sometimes feels nice, but otherwise I just can't find a reason to like this book? I feel like it also could have done without all the sex being right in front of your face. All in all I honestly could not tell you what was going on in a way that made sense.

[Roz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magical, spooky. Who knows what lies in the forest after dark? What mistruths have been told and believed year after year? On a summer day, Alienor comes to the crumbling country estate of Malmaison, bringing with her a reckoning and an awakening.

In dense, almost lyrical prose, Marie Helene Poitras (and her translator Rhonda Mullins) bring readers into a world that’s like a gothic fairy tale, a story of death and decay, of secrets and illusions, a place where blood flows into the dirt. It’s a charming story, and one that’s told in an interesting way- it must have been a pain to translate.

[Lou Hb · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.8 J’aurai pu donné un 4 et+ à ce roman pour son originalité certes mais c’est quand lourd. Une histoire actuelle dans un passé lointain. Époque et lieux inconnus. Un père règne en roi et des femmes disparaissent mais la progéniture reviendra. Littérature, écriture, peinture sont au centre de ce roman. La nourriture remplit presque toutes les pages. C’en est presque gargantuesque. Donc, j’ai aimé sans p,us mais quand-même apprécié la qualité.

[Marie-Eve Doré · Rating 3 out of 5]

Belle écriture mais je n'ai pas vraiment compris le narratif. Les coupures de ton entre le ludique et la "réalité" rendent la compréhension difficile. De même que les retours en arrière imbriqués dans l'histoire, qui font rompre la fluidité de la lecture. Roman résolument féministe, j'aurais beaucoup aimé l'aimer, mais tel que mentionné plus haut, la compréhension du récit est affectée par l'absence de transition entre les époques.