I actually like Brontë (Charlotte, I assume), but that’s not really a selling point anymore. As a combination, it’s more meaningless than my Joyce/Salinger comparison for Ducharme last week. A quote from Canadian Forum compares her to Proust, Joyce, Kafka, and Sarraute. What’s the pitch on this one besides just calling it classic? House of Anansi’s copy tells us it “is the timeless story of one woman’s destructive commitment to ideal love.” That does nothing for me. Kamouraska is her most famous, and most widely available in English. If someone was asked to name the top five “important,” “classic,” and “literary” writers from Quebec, they’d go “What? From where?” But if you asked someone from Quebec, along with Ducharme, they’d almost certainly name Anne Hébert. I want to finish it because it’s gorgeous, it’s a bit frightening, and if you’re willing to let it, it’ll break your heart and punch you in the gut. but I don’t want to put it down, despite being in the middle of other books that I’m enjoying (like one Chad mentioned last week, Laurence Leduc-Primeau’s In the End They Told Them All To Get Lost, from QC Fiction and translated by Natalia Hero). I started in on my reread of Anne Hébert’s classic Kamouraska (translated by Norman Shapiro), planning on getting just far enough into it to have things to write here. I can tell you something about why I liked a book, but not enough. I also hardly remember any details of things I’ve read. There’re far too much sitting on my shelves and piled in stacks on my floor. wrote weekly posts throughout February covering some of his favorite works of Quebec literature ever.
But rather than hoard these recommendations or write silly things about them, we decided it would be best if P.T.
Smith to recommend a few books for me to read, since he’s one of the few Americans I know who has read a lot of Quebec literature. Before starting this month’s focus on Quebec literature, I asked P.T.
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