There is a sad sweetness that emanates from this novel. Or perhaps a gentle sadness, depending on how we view the existence of these two brothers who could bear a thousand other names as their story unfortunately seems too common. Two brothers of color growing up in Scarborough, the same area of Toronto which gave its title to Catherine Hernandez’s poignant novel, published a few years ago.
“Scarlem, Scarbistan. We lived in Scar-broa suburb that had developed rapidly, whose life had blossomed in yellow, brown and black,” says Michael, the younger of the two brothers.
Michael and Francis grow up without safeguards. Absent father. Mother of Trinity who works odd jobs as a cleaning lady at odd hours, all over the metropolis, to make ends meet – forced to leave her young children alone at night. A mother like so many others around her, writes David Chariandy. “Who dreamed of raising children who could be just a little bit more than them, children who could reap the rewards of sacrifice and redeem the past. »
Michael grows up in the shadow of his older brother, who teaches him about life and lets him hang out with him and the other kids in the neighborhood. Teenagers who already know how to behave when the police show up in the neighborhood after a shooting.
Throughout the novel, he is the one who tells the story, between past and present. And who describes how, 10 years after the unthinkable, he and his mother are still prostrate in mourning for this son, this brother who carries within him all their disappointed hopes.
We were losers and little neighborhood schemers. We were the children of the service staff, with no future. None of us were what our parents wanted us to be.
David Chariandy
“We weren’t what all the other adults wanted us to be,” he wrote. We were nothing at all, or maybe, in a way, an entire town. »
Published in its original version in 2017, this novel was first translated in France, where it appeared the following year under the title 33 rounds ; but this is an adapted – and very appropriate – translation to which we are entitled. Then there was also the film adaptation of Clement Virgo, last year (under the title Brother), which was very well received. The author, who was himself born in Scarborough to Trinidadian parents, succeeds in bringing to life characters of disturbing sincerity, while constructing a novel with a poetic and enveloping rhythm. A novel whose deafening silence echoes these concrete suburbs, crossed by endless roads and so typically North American, where youth are relentlessly stranded, lacking prospects and left to their own devices in the middle of the general indifference.
Besides
Heliotrope
222 pages