Grand chelem by François Leblanc
2022; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 96; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/tfr.2022.0174
ISSN2329-7131
Autores Tópico(s)Canadian Identity and History
ResumoReviewed by: Grand chelem by François Leblanc Ritt Deitz Leblanc, François. Grand chelem. Québec Amérique, 2021. ISBN 978-2-7644-4428-3. Pp. 293. In a Montréal courtroom, psychologist and part-time novelist François Blanchard is found guilty of sexual misconduct. His accuser, a former client, sits quietly across the room. The judge suspends François’s license to practice for six months. The defendant is surprisingly calm, given the professional consequences and cash flow problems this situation creates. This opening scene feels like the beginning of a #MeToo tale, perhaps from a perpetrator’s point of view. (The former client does appear a few times, but only to stalk the narrator, not the other way around.) Instead, it becomes the story of an unexpected, unfunded sabbatical, rife with Leblanc’s core preoccupations: middle age, family, friendship, alcoholism, Leonard Cohen, and the multilayered geography of Montréal. As in many of Leblanc’s previous books, “family” looms large and problematic. François’s dead, uncaring father appears regularly in his dreams, while his widowed mother prefers her new retirement-community friends to her son’s half-hearted visits. François’s children visit him every other weekend: lost in their phones, Justine and Ludovic are standard-model teenagers, as surly with François as his father was. François responds in kind—distant, a drink in hand, jeans too skinny for his age. He spends far more time worrying that his younger conjointe, Geneviève, will fall for a more accomplished man, or pondering his indifference to the culture around him. “J’avais parfois l’impression d’avoir été congelé au vingtième siècle,” he says, “et dégelé au milieu de la cinquième saison de Game of Thrones” (96). Leblanc’s best characters worry about aging, but they can also grasp complex social change. François Blanchard is cut from this cloth. For him, Montréal is a balm, a Place in a sea of suburban Unplaces. He and Geneviève live in Mile-Ex, the recently rediscovered, formerly industrial neighborhood abutting Little Italy and Mile End. He takes Justine and Ludovic to the nearby Bibliothèque Marc-Favreau “quand je ne savais pas les convaincre de sortir de leurs chambres.” These trips are not for fun, they are educational, designed to show his kids “l’influence néfaste des monster houses de Boisbriand, où vivaient leurs nouveaux amis” (201). Leblanc’s stories often feature socially marginal characters, in ways that reveal their deep humanity. Here, the young ex-con François volunteers with serves mostly to showcase important urban juxtapositions. François treats Mikaël to doughnuts and coffee in a rundown Tim Hortons. Across the street from Mikaël’s shabby apartment are freshly constructed luxury condos. “Ces deux réalités s’affrontaient encore à plusieurs endroits à Montréal,” says the narrator, “mais le temps des appartements abordables pour des gueux comme Mikaël était compté” (83). The novel’s title is its only awkward part. Near the novel’s halfway point, François recalls dreams of playing professional baseball, providing a convenient analogy for his current plight: “Contrairement au hockey, le baseball était [...] un sport à [End Page 244] mon image: un sport d’été, d’une lenteur parfois insoutenable, avec des règles compliquées qui interloquaient les néophytes. Moi aussi, j’étais un incompris” (129). He is no home-run king, but Leblanc may be Montreal’s best straight-ahead storyteller. [End Page 245] Ritt Deitz University of Wisconsin, Madison Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French
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