Lise Tremblay returns to the short story, a genre that earned her several honors for La Heronniereincluding the Prix des libraires in 2004. In Rank of the Driftthe author of Judith’s sister explores in five stories a single subject: women in their early sixties who, after a breakup, must learn to rebuild themselves.
Posted at 6:30 p.m.
Rank of the Drift is a book that draws an unhappy image of the couple, and where men have the wrong role: cowards and egocentric, at the very least. The portrait is implacable, and Lise Tremblay’s chiseled, simple and direct prose only makes it more cruel.
The women of the five short stories are all facets of the same story, they sacrificed themselves in a relationship based on an imbalance, whether in charisma, age, fame, romantic investment. After the shock of the breakup, there is shame and pain, but they will also walk towards a kind of emancipation, sometimes throwing everything overboard: it is never too late to be free.
Female solidarity will be of great help to them on the path to peace. This is one of the brightest aspects of this book, which has the immense merit of giving voice to aging women, whom we hear only too rarely, both in society and in fiction.
Breaking it down into five stories is, however, perhaps a bit too heavy a process. There remains the impression of a lucid and frank collection, which is not afraid to probe the pain to the depths, which looks death in the face and which gives its characters control over their lives.
“And I was going to slowly start to age in this apartment. Lise Tremblay thus submits the last sentence of the last story as a gift: that of regained dignity.
Rank of the Drift
Lise Tremblay
boreal
144 pages