In 2010, Forrest Fenn, an American billionaire, organized a scavenger hunt in the Rockies to promote the outdoors. Based on a poem containing a handful of clues, thousands of people set out on the trek to get their hands on the loot — jewels and gold worth two million dollars. The research, which lasted around ten years, led to five deaths and a series of controversies that say a lot about human nature.
Ten years after the launch of this treasure hunt, a few months before a hiker finally found the loot, Myriam Vincent stumbled upon this news item which was, to say the least, romantic. This absurd story served as a starting point for Greedyhis third novel, which tells the story of the quest of a young woman, Eve, who sets out on the trail of a treasure hidden on the Rideau Trail, in Ontario.
“I had wanted to write fiction for a while that would revolve around alienation at work and economic disparities,” explains the author, sitting at a table in a Montreal café. There are so many people who work in a profession that they don’t like and which doesn’t even allow them to become financially independent. This is a problem that can really grow and completely take over their lives, beliefs and decisions. When you stop to think about it, it’s crazy that we accept living in a system that twists individuals like that. »
The treasure hunt turned out to be the ideal experience for thinking about this subject. By consulting the forums devoted to it, the writer noted that the participants were part of all social strata. “There were of course people who went away for a weekend for fun with friends, but there were also other people for whom this treasure was the only way to emancipate themselves, to pay their medical debts, their studies or their mortgage, and get out of poverty. Some have dropped everything to embark on this adventure. And sometimes, it gave rise to desperate behavior. »
Myriam Vincent therefore imagined the character of Eve, a young woman who, after a master’s degree in translation and several student debts, is trapped in an alienating job which bores her and deprives her of freedom, agency and ‘development. Determined to reverse the course of her life, she throws herself headfirst into a treasure hunt organized by Solange McKay, a wealthy art collector who wants to promote the outdoors. Eve is convinced that she has unearthed a clue putting her on the trail where the loot is hidden, among all those contained in Canadian national parks.
On the Rideau Trail, she meets Jade, a young student who is passionate about hiking. Feeling the flow between them, the two women decide to continue the route together and try to outdo all the other hikers who have the same objective as them. However, for Eve, the lure of profit and the desire to escape from precariousness increasingly take over, to the detriment of her new relationship and her moral sense.
Narrative triptych
As in his two previous novels, Fury (Bush Poets, 2020) and At home (2022), Myriam Vincent chose an exploded form to tell her story, which is available here in three levels of narration which alternate in a precise order. The first – the main plot – relates the journey of Jade and Eve in the forest from the perspective of the latter. The second, always written in the first person, recounts in detail an ordinary day in Eve’s life, evoking the hours that pass at a snail’s pace at work, the breaks calculated to the minute, the obligatory jogging at the start evening, household chores and cocooning in front of Netflix. The third narrative frame takes place after the discovery of the treasure by the protagonist, while the latter reflects on her experience on various Quebec and American talk shows.
“It gives me the chance to explore my story in lots of different ways and to offer more perspectives,” says the author. The interviews, for example, reveal a lot about how Eve perceives herself and how she wishes to be perceived by others, while the portion on her unbearable daily life brings to the reader’s mind the desperate situation that pushes him to commit certain actions and which explains his state of mind. »
Through these different levels of reading, Myriam Vincent does not hesitate to mishandle her heroine, to knead her with contradictions, to make her commit actions that lead to questions and judgments. She thus skillfully questions the relationship that everyone has with lies, with the projected image as opposed to reality, constantly placing the reader in a position of doubt, both in relation to the characters and in relation to themselves. It therefore raises intriguing questions: do we really know the people around us? Do we really know ourselves? Is there a difference between what we think we are and what we are?
“Today, with social networks, we are all in a bit of a self-presentation. I believe that what we portray relies a lot on the values that we think are the right ones, on the things to do to reflect the image we have of an adequate person for the society in which we live. lives. I am fascinated by this game between projected identity, the identity we think we have and real identity. »
Ignorance of nature
In the heart of the forest, while hikers will be increasingly driven by greed, greed and despair, the law of the strongest reigns, shedding light on all the ethical issues surrounding such a treasure hunt, starting by the fact that people who have never set foot in nature go into it with their eyes closed, with their ignorance as their only partner.
This situation once again echoes certain problems caused by social networks, in particular the overcrowding of natural spaces by masses of tourists in search of the perfect photo. “I have the impression that we often treat nature the way we treat Walmart, like any consumer good, when it is quite the opposite,” says Myriam Vincent. I have no lessons to give, I’m not the most eco-friendly person, but we betray our environment so much, it seems to me that it’s the least we can do to pay a little attention to the few spaces that are not still completely destroyed. »