Catherine Perrin has made the art of asking questions a real career. As a journalist, at the microphone of the Première Chaîne de Radio-Canada. Then as a novelist, where she examines the spirit of the times and probes the faults and the beauties of the human soul.
In Age of accidents, her most recent novel, it is through catastrophes, natural or a little less, that the writer examines our time, the systems, the beliefs and the lies which govern it. Does one single event have the power to shake our convictions and change the course of our lives? Are accidents really? Is there still a place for nuance?
Patricia, science journalist, has a flourishing career, a sensitive and intelligent lover, two children who navigate adulthood with gentleness and serenity and a life made of happiness and certainties. Until horror knocked on the door …
Her daughter, Jasmine, barely survives a collapsed viaduct, eroded by torrential rains and neglect. The young woman witnesses, helplessly, the incompetence of the authorities, blinded by protocols and bureaucracy, which will lead to the death of twenty children trapped in a school bus under the concrete structure.
“She told me everything, physically intact, but like burnt alive from the inside. The fact that she could have died seemed secondary to her, while I was losing my breath. She spoke quickly, in a strange, monotonous and cold tone, with something drastic in her eyes. “
Extract from “The Age of Accidents”
From then on, everything changed. The sense of moderation, prudence, impartiality that define Patricia and her profession as a journalist now seem to go hand in hand with the inaction and blindness that led to the tragedy. They allow the truth to slip away, to be embellished, to make itself more acceptable. Journalism, this watchdog of democracy, seems less and less likely to lead a disorganized world towards a greener and brighter tomorrow.
The questions that inhabit Catherine Perrin set the pages ablaze to the point of haunting people’s minds, in a sometimes elusive ballet. The novel carries at times an ambition which the writer does not always manage to measure, so many leads are numerous and questions, vast. This discrepancy nevertheless has the effect, like life, of reminding us that healing and renewal can only occur if we strip emotions and experiences of their intensity.
The narration, sometimes a little conventional, is therefore absolved in favor of a sober and elegant pen, which breathes hope and beauty into chaos, and highlights a solidarity and human ingenuity that we wrongly think are evanescent. A novel reminiscent of the sweetness of a melting macaroon, or the hot coffees savored in front of a grandiose, but ephemeral landscape.