Do You like book Kamouraska (Le Livre De Poche) (1997)?
The literature of French Canada has the trait of telling heart-breaking stories in an unconventional way, often with a touch of the macabre. Hebert's novel, Kamouraska, continues in this tradition. The novel opens in Quebec City, on a hot day of July (about 1857), in the home of the respectable Monsieur and Madame Rolland. Monsieur Rolland is dying, and his exhausted wife is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Beneath her mask of respectability, Madame Rolland carries a terrible secret, namely how, as a young woman, she became involved in an adulterous love triangle which led to murder. Sleeping only fitfully, the shocking tale of Mme. Rolland's early life is revealed (unconventionally) in fragments of dreams which seem to be equally made up of memory and nightmare. The reader accompanies her on this nightmarish journey. Hebert beautifully creates a sense of life in the charming small town of Sorel, Quebec in the 1830s. Her descriptions of winter are especially vivid. Though the winter is beautiful, it is also a sinister force which isolates and endangers the book's characters. The book is structured so that its short chapters brilliantly recreate the dread of a woman trapped between a present reality, and her fitful dreams. Both her present and her past unfold in fragments as she drifts in and out of consciousness. Mme. Elisabeth Rolland is a complex character, and the reader must decide how much she can be trusted to confront the history of her own life. In this regard, I was reminded of Daphne du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel.
—Uncle
"I'm going to be married. My mother has said yes. And so have I, deep in the darkness of my flesh. Will you help me? Tell me, Mother, will you? What's your advice? And you, dear aunts? Tell me, is it love? Is it really love that's troubling me so? Making me feel as if I'm about to drown..." A realization I've made over the past few months is I have to read more Quebecois writers. Every single female Quebecois writer I've come across has been wonderful. I've read an Hébert novella and a collection of poems, this is the first time for me to read a full book and what an experience. I love it when poets write novels. And this one, although was difficult to follow at the start, is amazing and full of intrigue. And it was apparently based on a true story, one which took place in 19th Century Quebec.Elisabeth d'Aulnières and Antoine Tassy, squire of Kamouraska. What else would a girl want? This is called a gothic mystery but I saw it as something more, as a woman in despair. She is abused, her husband openly cheats on her, and she perhaps falls for the first man who is kind to her, the first man she opens up to about her husband's abuse. Using this American Protestant man, Hébert shows how different he was from Catholic French culture:"They're afraid of you, Doctor Nelson. As if, under all that obvious selflessness of yours-- too obvious, perhaps-- some fearsome identity lies hidden...That original flaw, deeper than your Protestant religion, deeper than your English language..." I enjoyed this book very much. You feel the despair of a woman trapped, having nowhere to go, being forced to bear children and stay in a loveless marriage. This is the despair of a very young woman who seems to have aged before her time because of turmoil. Very beautifully written.
—Rowena
Blood and snow. Passion and violence. Deathbeds. Fever. Madness. Forbidden passion destroying the lives of everyone in its wake. The dark tension-filled drama of long Russian novels. Anna Karenina or Doctor Zhivago, but the snows are Canadian and the language is French.Madame Rolland is caring for her husband on his deathbed. For years, she has been the image of respectability – crisp and frigid perhaps, but imminently respectable. Yet her mind is unable to extricate itself from her past. She is haunted, preyed upon by the passion and violence of her former life. Hallucinatory images from the past block the reality of present life from her psyche.The instability of Elisabeth Rolland’s mind is reflected in the style of the writing. The narrative switches from present to past with no warning or apology; the main character is described in both 3rd person and 1st person, depending on the time stream she is experiencing; the stream of consciousness narration expresses the emotion of the story far more than the chronology of the plot. This was by no means an easy book to read – either in its content or its narrative flow. It expressed the aura of the Canadian winter with crystalline beauty, but I found myself resenting the lack of clarity or control in its emotional trajectory. The stream of consciousness style made it easy to enter into the emotion of the moment, but more difficult to step back and analyze the actions of the characters. When I found myself feeling sympathetic towards the characters who were plotting homicide, I knew this book would not be a re-read for me.
—Beth
