- Paperback: 220 pages
- Publisher: Cormorant Books Inc (Mar 4 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1897151144
- ISBN-13: 978-1897151143
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 12.7 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,503,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Canadian novelist Poulin's edgy allegory finds Teddy Bear, a translator of newspaper comic strips, living in happy isolation on a remote island, with his cat, his reference books, internal dialogues with a possibly imaginary brother and the Prince, a robotic tennis opponent. When the boss who commissions Teddy's work decides the cat must be lonely, the boss flies in on his helicopter a lady cat and black-eyed Marie. Felines and humans pair off, but their idyll is interrupted by the arrival of an eclectic parade of new residents introduced by the boss to make Teddy happy: the boss's free-spirit wife, Featherhead; a French comic book scholar; a muttering Author; a practical Ordinary Man; and an Organizer who is sent to sensitize the population. As Teddy learns the true fate of his painstakingly wrought weekly translations and winter approaches, the earnest silliness turns dark. It's as funny and fresh now as when it was first published (in French) in 1978. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Quill & Quire
After the Red Night, the latest novel by Quebec author Christiane Frenette, opens with brief “gesture drawings” of its five characters three nights after Rimouski’s “la nuit rouge” in May 1950, when fire devastated half the city. These quick sketches include: the remote, puzzling Marie; her soon-to-be husband Romain, newly returned from medical school; his childhood friend Thomas, whose erratic behaviour lands him in an asylum; Joe, an ambitious boy in Illinois; and a curious pre-birth reference to Marie’s fourth child, Lou. From there, Frenette proceeds to embellish and link these tableaux – the first three in the year 1955, the last two nearly five decades later. Moving back and forth among them, Frenette assembles aspects of her characters’ inner histories and relationships to reveal people who are unable to entirely decipher or escape their own sense of isolation and disappointment. Interpreting the landscape of these lives is a challenge. In two of Frenette’s previous books – the novel Terra Firma and the story collection The Woman Who Walks on Glass – she employs second-person narration or nameless characters as a means of distancing the reader. After the Red Night takes the opposite approach, stepping closer and gaining intimacy, but its surfaces continue to conceal elusive emotional depths. This is by no means a flaw; in fact, the ambiguity is part of the book’s appeal. Sheila Fischman’s translation employs a poetic, bare-bones style, which amplifies Frenette’s theme of the impossibility of knowing anyone or anything with certainty. Truth is ultimately elusive; the only choice available to us is to trust in our limited knowledge. After the Red Night is a stylistic treat. It offers a subtle rendering of the self’s paradoxical mysteries and of our attempts to escape the things that make us who we are.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exercises in Space,
By Octavia Bermbach (Aranjuez, Spain) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Spring Tides (Paperback)
I first read "Les Grandes Marées" or "Spring Tides" in University as part of a course in French Canadian Literature at UBC. If I was, admittedly, initially rather jaded by the material we covered, this book presented me with a whole new perspective, not only on life, but on what French-Canadian literature and society can be. I have since read and re-read this book, most recently on a bus from Madrid to Warsaw, and it never fails to provoke conflicting emotions within me- I invariably derive a sense of profound well-being, followed by the deepest sense of helplessness, but always, always, close the book never wanting it to end. So why am I looking to buy the English version? Well, I would like to give it to my mother for Christmas this year. The CBC is doing its "Canada Reads" and another Poulin clasic, "Volkswagen Blues" is on offer... and seeing that title drew me back to "The Spring Tides" and the beauty and longing and loss that it evoked in me... A wonderful novel.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews) 1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ready for a Movie Screen,
By Jonathan A. Weiss - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spring Tides (Paperback)
This whimsical book features a myriad of fascinating characters whose interplay gives the work a poignant satirical aspect. Very visual as well as well written, it gives the reader an insight into the worlds of journalism, cartoons, Canadian culture and economy. It would make an excellent movie.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exercises in Space,
By Octavia Bermbach - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spring Tides (Paperback)
I first read "Les Grandes Marées" or "Spring Tides" in University as part of a course in French Canadian Literature at UBC. If I was, admittedly, initially rather jaded by the material we covered, this book presented me with a whole new perspective, not only on life, but on what French-Canadian literature and society can be. I have since read and re-read this book, most recently on a bus from Madrid to Warsaw, and it never fails to provoke conflicting emotions within me- I invariably derive a sense of profound well-being, followed by the deepest sense of helplessness, but always, always, close the book never wanting it to end. So why am I looking to buy the English version? Well, I would like to give it to my mother for Christmas this year. The CBC is doing its "Canada Reads" and another Poulin clasic, "Volkswagen Blues" is on offer... and seeing that title drew me back to "The Spring Tides" and the beauty and longing and loss that it evoked in me... A wonderful novel.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Funny and Thought Provoking,
By Linda C. Wright - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Spring Tides (Paperback)
Spring Tides is funny, quirky and full of interesting characters. I had no idea that Jacques Poulin was a Canadian novelist when I purchased this title. Its full of emotion an is brilliantly written and translated.Linda C. Wright Author One Clown Short |
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