With his fourth novel, Snow trailswhich appears simultaneously in Quebec (October 2) and in France (October 4), Kev Lambert confirms his incredible ability to change register, without losing sight of his voice and his themes.
Those who expected a May our joy remain take two will surely be destabilized, and those who did not like this novel awarded the Medici, December and Ringuet prizes will undoubtedly be very surprised. But those who have been reading Kev Lambert since You’ll love what you killedhis first novel published in 2017, will simply experience a reunion.
Short chapters, breathtaking pace, suspense and fantasy, humor and cruelty, a very Quebecois orality, a tribute to Stephen King, Michel Garneau and video games Zeldait’s a bit of all that and even more, Snow trailsa mind-boggling Christmas tale of more than 400 pages which aims to be a eulogy to the imagination before the fall into the adult world.
Obviously, writing the same thing to meet expectations is not to Lambert’s taste, despite his multitude of literary prizes at the age of 31 and beyond.
“The relationship to transformation, to metamorphosis, to what is not fixed, is in my intimate life, but also in my artistic practice,” explains Kev Lambert. I always have the need not to stay in one place, to really transform my literature each time. This change in the tone, in the characters, in the worlds, and the questions that the text poses, is what allows me to write. »
We meet in a café in Little Italy, not far from his apartment in Montreal, which is increasingly a pied-à-terre, as Kev prefers to live in nature. The child who grew up in Chicoutimi was never really able to get used to Montreal.
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Kevin Lambert
Piercing eyes, long hair, her features have become refined, with a spectacular androgynous beauty. Kev is in transition, which explains his change of first name. It’s no longer Kevin, but Kev now.
“We are always somewhat confronted with social expectations in life in general, and in transition in particular. One of these expectations is the change of first name. I realized that I wasn’t interested in it, and anyway, everyone has been calling me Kev for a long time. I like that we can hear Eve…” We also agree with laughter that Kevin is a difficult first name to bear since the viral video Happy Birthday Kevin…
If we really want to, his definition would be that of non-binarity, and this vagueness interests him, since his transition began a little over a year ago.
“In many testimonies, we hear: “I have always felt like a woman”, but for me, it has never been as clear as that, my relationship to gender. It’s more a report of incomprehension. It seems that software like this has not been installed in my home. People say to me: a transition to what? It doesn’t have to be towards anything. It’s just a process, and we’ll see where it goes. »
Kev never expressed it better than in this moving text published in the magazine Freedom“Transitioning in a hateful world”.
Read his text published in the journal Freedom
What fascinates me most about this exceptional person on many levels is that, despite his success and the media hype surrounding him, he is a person who remains very close to his deep values. Both sensitive and solid, free and responsible. His work is in his image.
Writing about trauma
His questions inspired the writing of Snow trailswhere we move without warning from “he”, to “she” to “we” and “we”. The two main characters, Zoey and her cousin Émie-Anne, are not children like the others and live in an environment that is often hostile to those who do not fit into the norm. Zoey is a boy who has to hide his “girlish” tastes, who is told by his father to stop “breaking his wrist”, in addition to disappointing him by giving him a Montreal Canadiens cozy for Christmas. Émie-Anne is an adopted child who is reminded, by calling her a “little Chinese girl”, that she is not a “real” member of the Lamontagne family.
The family is a bit of a microcosm of Quebec society where the difference is constantly highlighted, but Zoey and Émie, completely united, can count on each other, in this often close friendship of children, in wanting to save a creature. named Skyd, straight from their imagination. For how long will this complicity last? Because Émie is about to enter adolescence, and her “reserves of wonder are running out”…
PHOTO FRANÇOIS ROY, THE PRESS
Kev Lambert, who began his transition a little over a year ago
Kev Lambert wanted to write about childhood trauma, drawing on the cultural universe of his youth; these books, these films and these games to which we escape from an oppressive reality. We then discuss our love for The Chronicles of Narniaa novel series by CS Lewis in which children discover a magical world at the bottom of a wardrobe. I dreamed of finding this passage at the bottom of my wardrobe when I was little.
“I really looked for this door! “, says Kev, laughing. “There is in these stories the promise that you will find another universe where you will have a place, an importance, where everyone will love you. As a child, I didn’t always feel loved, because I was in a world that didn’t really accept me, and I dreamed a lot of finding my place elsewhere. »
Becoming an adult often means discovering that all these beautiful stories ultimately do not exist, and that fiction is a lie… which nevertheless helps us to live, not to say survive.
“When we approach trauma in the arts, it’s often in a fragmentary form,” notes Kev. It’s logical because trauma, by definition, has something that escapes discourse, the possibility of telling it, it resists speech. I realized that to achieve a form of healing, you must achieve a narrative capacity. To include the trauma in a story, in a human existential adventure. »
For this reason, Stephen King, whom Kev Lambert has read extensively and continues to read today, is a bit of an expert. “In almost all of his books, we find the infigurable of trauma. Formally, I wanted the novel to adopt certain traits of this literature that I loved. »
May our joy remain was an exploration of the inner life that used architecture as a metaphor, drawing inspiration from the style of Marie-Claire Blais and Virginia Woolf, according to Kev. “ Snow trails also, but on that of children, and we had to use materials that make sense for them. Their inner life takes the form of a 3D video game like Zeldaperhaps the masterpiece of games of those years. »
The fact that the plot takes place during the Christmas period accentuates its strangeness and will awaken many memories in readers. Kev Lambert perfectly captures this particular holiday madness, but from the point of view of children, who miss nothing, even when surrounded by drunk people.
“Christmas is supposed to be the most amazing thing in the world, but for me, Christmas wasn’t just that. My family was a bit like the one described by Michel Garneau in Winter, yesterday. In a word that always seeks to sting the other. But I still found my uncles really funny, because they were also exuberant. In fact, at Christmas, adults no longer have their adult masks, and when we see underneath the masks, sometimes it’s scary. »
This may be the first time I’ve said this when talking about a novel, but I suggest you delay reading until the first snow to intensify the experience. “I would like this book to resonate a little with the readers’ childhood, to rekindle that little flame,” wishes Kev, whose book will surely find its way into many Christmas stockings.
In bookstore Wednesday
Snow trails
Heliotrope
415 pages