“Qimmik”, Michel Jean | The duty

Story in two parts, first that of Eve, a young lawyer who undertakes to defend an Inuit accused of the murder of two police officers from the Sûreté du Québec. On the other, that of the couple formed by Saullu and Ulaajuk who, a few years earlier, embraced the wild, harsh and silent life offered by the tundra. Between them, the essential presence of qimmik, these dogs “considered[s] just like a human” and without whom “many things become impossible”. Taking a path that he knows well, Michel Jean implicitly evokes the transformations that the peoples of the North underwent when the Whites arrived. Jean’s writing oscillates between poetry, associated with the beauty that the characters have with the earth, and the didactic and cold tone, with which he tells the story, in particular the barbaric hunting of dogs by the police. If the plot of Qimmik is rather predictable, that the characters sometimes remain stereotyped, the universe presented by the author of Kukum requires contemplation and reflection.

Qimmik

★★★ 1/2

Michel Jean, Libre Expression, Montreal, 2023, 226 pages

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