Juliette Pomerleau

by Yves Beauchemin

Entièrement revue par l'auteur, cette édition peut être considérée comme la version définitive de Juliette Pomerleau .

Avec Le Matou et Charles le téméraire, Juliette Pomerleau figure parmi les meilleures œuvres de Beauchemin et fait partie des titres les plus marquants de la littérature québécoise. Salué par la critique qui l'a hissé au niveau des plus grands, dont Dickens, Rabelais et Balzac, Beauchemin donne vie à des personnages qu'on n'oublie pas. Des centaines de milliers de lecteurs ont suivi les péripéties de Juliette, sans compter les téléspectateurs qui se sont attachés au personnage en regardant la série au petit écran.

Genres: France, Fiction, Roman, Canada

864 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Stela · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un peu déçue de ce deuxième roman de Yves Beauchemin que j'ai lu. Très long, très encombré et pourtant sans une vraie profondeur. Beaucoup d’idées mais peu menées à la fin, beaucoup de personnages qui parlent de la même façon et sont plutôt bidimensionnels – qui aiment sacrer mais dont les jurons, qui se veulent pittoresques sont d’un humour assez douteux (est-ce que « sueur de coq » est vraiment amusant?); beaucoup de fils narratifs qui créent une action compliquée inutilement et qui agace éperdument; en un mot, gaucher.

Recommandé aux ados qui veulent tuer leur ennui pendant un long voyage, car, il faut rendre à César ce qui est à César, le roman ne manque pas d’une certaine verve narrative, la même que j’ai découverte avec délice dans son autre roman, « Les émois d’un marchand de café. »

[Mylène Fréchette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Le ton humoristique, les péripéties qui s’enchaînent et les personnages hauts en couleur rendent le roman très intéressant… jusqu’à ce que le récit s’essouffle et que ça devienne longuet. Certaines intrigues, par exemple le secret du dentiste, sont tellement étirées que j’ai été déçue lorsqu’on dévoilait enfin le dénouement, qui tombe un peu à plat. Malgré le bonheur de lecture, je crois sincèrement que le roman aurait gagné à être retranché de quelques centaines de pages…

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this novel a great deal. Yes its length would lead one to expect something more epic in scope than what it is, which is a comic portrait of a flawed but unforgettable and unflappable woman and her coterie of relatives, tenants, and those drawn into the gravitational pull of her personality. I use the gravity metaphor advisedly, since the author takes great pains to portray and remind the reader of the title character's immense bulk and girth. Whatever else might be said about Juliette Pomerleau, she is loved by many and loves with gusto in return. There are numerous sub-plots that extend the narrative, the most compelling and well-told involving the brilliant but unknown composer Martinek and his wife Rachel's attempts to get him discovered. Not all the characters that populate this novel are likeable, but all are more or less believable, and the core of the book is the sense of committed love and friendship that binds the central characters together around Juliette, however erratic their individual orbits might be.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Juliette is well executed novel which takes place in Montreal. Upon recovering from a near fatal bout of viral hepatitis, Juliette recalls a promise she made to her dead aunt to find her niece Adele whose son she is raising. Adele becomes a mystery. Juliette and her friends move from one climax to another, trying to find her, with barely a breather in between. They encounter, along the way, the seedy parts of life and, in some, that in themselves. It is a hard book to put down.

[Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always love a book written by a French Canadian writer, especially by someone as brilliant as Yves Beauchemin ❤️🤩😍

[Andrée-Anne Bastien · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prêté à Gaby

[David Waddington · Rating 1 out of 5]

Yves Beauchemin spent something like seven years working on Juliette Pomerleau, and the result is a sprawling waste of time that is in desperate need of an editor. Juliette is a clichéd character--she is a fat lady (Beauchemin calls her "l'obèse" and never fails to give us a detailed description of her huffing and puffing after climbing some stairs) who is generous and kind, and who uses her own "charming" idiomatic expressions (esp. "Sueur de coq"--I'd love to see what the translator did with that one).

After a tedious brush with death that takes up a solid 200 or so pages (one almost hopes that she would die, but she is eventually cured through the power of music), Juliette spends the next 600 pages obsessed with two (incredibly tedious) quests: rescuing her wayward niece from a sadistic bookshop owner and reclaiming her old house on René Levesque St. A cast of predictable characters rounds out the show: a nosy photographer, a talented but unknown composer, an unscrupulous land speculator, and a mean spinster sister.

There is absolutely no reason to waste your time reading this book. At 800+ pages, it's just like an extremely boring version of Dickens with all of Dickens' sentiment and hokeyness and little of the humor and fun.

[Tamara Mihailović · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great biggining and till end it was Ok, but end comes so soon and it was for me disapointed

[Sumathi]

I did not finish it ... ...