Reading in French; 'Les Grandes Nouvelles Françaises du Vingtième Siècle'

The yoga video is interesting. Québécois is quite different. The vowels are broader, I think, than standard French.
I'm watching 'Lupin' at the moment on Netflix. It's very good.

1. 'Le Livre et la Dent' by Pierrette Fleutiaux

This short story is about a mother who is under huge strain, perhaps due to overwork and exhaustion, who looks forward to her night-time ritual of reading when she gets time to herself. Her child is slow to settle down to sleep, however, and needs her to find his or her lost tooth to place under the pillow. While helping the child, she experiences a kind of waking dream where she imagines the collapse of the building and she takes on the arduous task of rebuilding it by herself.

This story was an interesting read as it takes a turn into the surreal very quickly. Finding the tooth becomes the sole focus and as the woman pursues it, she seems to lose her grip on reality, as the building deteriorates around her and she falls into a deep black hole.

She rises up from the rubble. A crowd draws around her from the other apartments. There is total devastation but the tooth is still within her view. The woman has already hurt her hand from prising a floorboard, but now we are informed, rather casually, that the axe that she had borrowed is now embedded in her head. She continues on, in spite of the headache.

The woman encounters several characters while she rebuilds the apartment block. They are in general, not helpful to her in her quest. They have issues in one way or other with teeth, toothache, no teeth, or they try and tempt her to leave the scene or distract her with other ideas.

The character of the mason is helpful. He commits himself to her project. In fact, he is overly helpful and pulls out his own tooth for her, removing half of his jaw in the process. This is an example of the violent, grotesque imagery that is interwoven into this story.

After much toil, tears and trouble, the woman eventually succeeds in finding the tooth and places it under her child's pillow. We get the impression that things are back to normal, except that the child has bruises. The woman finds that she can't settle down to her book. The mason with the broken jaw returns to ask her to change his bandage. She is still experiencing the waking dream. It isn't over. The woman lies down but in fear that she will relive the dream all over again.

This was a strange, unsettling story. The reader wasn't sure about what might happen next as the story took its various twists and turns. I thought it was well written and succeeded in evoking the panic and claustrophobic qualities of a nightmare and the absurdity that one experiences often in dreams. It reminded me of the times when I had broken sleep due to night-time feeds when I had babies. Overall, it was an interesting read and very different to the other short stories that we have read so far.

From a language point of view, I liked the line, 'Tout craque, grince, culbute, cogne, s'entrecroise et s'entrechoque, s'écrase, s'empile et s'entasse' to describe the collapse of the building. An impressive list of verbs indeed :)

That's funny, Taswama. It's a French-Canadian theme this week :)

I'll go look it up :)

Hi Taswama! Would you recommend 'Bondrée'? Is it good?

Hi MamaLa321! I'm glad you enjoyed it :) yes, that detail was dropped at the end of the story. I wonder was she panicking at the thought of being unmarried at nearly thirty and thinking that her life was over?

That's a good word to describe the atmosphere in the story. It is completely stifling.

I think her father was planning to send Réjane to her aunt for a while and that he would sort things out. Did he mean cancelling arrangements, sorting out the gift list?

Hey, MaMaLa321 there's no hassle, we don't have a schedule

1. 'Pleure, pleure!' by Andrée Maillet.

This short story is centred around a conversation between a girl and her parents. Réjane's fiancé has called off their engagement and she is breaking the news to her parents over lunch. They are upset, but they react in different ways.

M. Bélisle is outraged that this has happened to his family. It will be a stain on his family's reputation. He talks very negatively about Jean-Charles and even considers taking him to court or using his contacts to hinder his career.

He sees the broken engagement as a nuisance, a problem for him to deal with. It's an annoyance, much like what is happening in the news with the French-Canadian minority who have issues on a daily basis in their struggle to achieve equal status in society. The news distracts him and he zones in and out of the conversation.

The title, 'Pleure, pleure' refers to Mme Bélisle's entreaty to her daughter to cry on her shoulder to help her get over it. We get the impression that she is sympathetic to Réjane, but is rather vacuous, only interested in recipes and the social pages of magazines. Her husband is scathing of both of them in his annoyance, 'L'une avec ses grands mots, l'autre avec son mouchoir: les femmes sont toutes les mêmes'. He comes across as an unlikeable character.

While M. Bélisle loves his daughter, we get the impression that he is proprietorial where she is concerned. He is glad to be able to hold onto her for a while longer. Réjane herself feels frustrated as she goes upstairs to her bedroom. She despairs that she will never leave her parents' ornate apartment and that she will become an old maid.

The reader questions the engagement; it almost feels like an arranged marriage with little love on either side.

I enjoyed this story. I think it succeeded in depicting the expectation placed on young women from the upper classes during that time (1950s/60s) to marry well. It was well written. I particularly liked the author's technique of inserting the excerpts of news reports in the text to illustrate the distraction in the thoughts of M. Bélisle. The story worked well in that it focussed on the family drama against the backdrop of 'The Quiet Revolution' in Canada.

From a language point of view, I liked the opening paragraphs that described the hustle and bustle of the city at mid-day and especially the description of the students coming out of school. I also liked the phrase 'les coups de bec' to mean 'a few harsh words'.

Yes, definitely. I'm going to look up this author and see what else he has written.

Well done on guessing, Taswama! I'm often like thatt though, when I read. I usually find out at the end!

Or he likes to think of himself as caring, but he really only cares about himself!

Hi MaMaLa321!

No, I didn't guess Georges' identity either, until the end (the dénouement!). I think that the author was careful to not give too much away, prior to that.Yes, it is a funny description, the poor little mite, it's not a bit flattering ('à moitié chauve').

I think that the character of Bernard is more defined than Irène's, as we have access to his thoughts. He calls himself sensitive, almost as if he is a nice, decent individual, who cares about a woman in distress. Almost. But his cold, calculated nature comes to the fore. He isn't fooling anyone, except Irène.

I was wondering what was preventing an engagement between Bernard and Irène. I think she only sees him as a friend and doesn't have deeper feelings for him. He is blaming Georges for that and so hatches his dastardly plan.

I read the French version and refer to the translation when I need to, usually for vocabulary or idioms that I don't know. I found that this translation reads well on its own, and the story was straightforward to read too.

I liked this phrase: 'J'ai de la suite dans les idées' meaning 'I have great persistence'. I wonder if this phrase is still in use today.

1. 'Iceberg' by Fred Kassak.

This short story is about the relationship between Irène, Bernard and Georges. We learn early on that Bernard is jealous of the bond between Irène and Georges and will do anything to break it and have Irène for himself.

I enjoyed this short story very much. It was well written and it kept me guessing up to the end.

Bernard is a nefarious character; he is ruthless, single-minded, and will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Irène seems gullible; she doesn't seem to suspect anything. I noted that they use 'vous' rather than 'tu', so it suggests that while friendly, they are not intimate. The reader hopes that she will come to her senses sooner than later and leave Bernard.

The story finishes with Irène rescuing her baby son from certain death, but we are left with the unsettling impression that Bernard has become even more determined and there is more trouble to come.

I also liked the title of the story; the hidden danger of the iceberg; the menace that this person represents for Irène and the devastation that he could cause for her.

'Je préfère rester pour elle un iceberg: un cinquième visible et le reste immergé'.