Although she has lived “Outside” for 20 years, Geneviève Dufour has not forgotten the essence of the Charlevoix region where she grew up. A literature teacher who until now “wrote in secret”, she comes out of her reserve to offer us As if by magica mosaic of stories anchored more in the roughness of life in Charlevoix than in the beauty of the landscapes to which tourists cling.
With a pen that is both sober and colorful, embellished by the language of her native village, Geneviève Dufour delves into her family history and that of the characters who populate Rivière-Malbaie. There is talk of earthquakes, hunting and fishing for mussels, nudists who monopolize corners of the beach, but also quarrels, silences, poverty and audacity which, she notes, are lacking in postcards.
Through the history of others, it is also his own that emerges, marked by a voluntary uprooting which, like an earthquake, created a divide between two lives. “By evicting myself in this way, and this despairs me, I have lost a natural access to this world which I can now only observe through the damp and blurry lens of melancholy,” she writes.
Geneviève Dufour aptly names this feeling of rupture which inhabits those who have, one day or another, left their native region to settle abroad, this ambivalent relationship to the accent and this impression of discrepancy which marks each return. A collage of stories that are both introspective and turned towards others, anchored in a territory that is not told enough.
As if by magic
House on Fire editions
112 pages