Francis Ouellette was born somewhere between the St. Lawrence River and Sainte-Catherine Street, in the smoky and noisy streets of Montreal’s Faubourg à m’lasse. This now defunct working-class district owed its nickname, if rumors are to be believed, to the smell of molasses coming from the quays of the port.
Like many poor children in the neighborhood, he grew up brought up left and right by anyone sober enough to welcome him, lulled by the sound of cars driving through the streets lined with “garnottes”, the imagination flowered by myths and legends that precede the robineux of the corner. He plays the king of the mountain on the huge piles of rubbish that strewn the bank and rinses his war wounds in the bile hemmed from the river.
In this funny and deeply lucid fresco, the writer surveys the recesses and underground passages of his memory — and of a neighborhood he knows like the face of a mother — to bring the myths and legends of his childhood back to life. We meet there, among others, Ti-Crisse, his Harley and his voice of blues and rock, married to Josettedevant le Dieu des lesbians; Frigo, the simple local tramp, wearing a wrought iron crown; Lil’ Mike, the fallen saxophonist; Éric le pas-sorteux and Raymonde, an indelible rocking-a-thon champion.
At the heart of this gallery of characters as exotic as it is threatening, little Francis, left to himself, observes, dodges, learns, takes blows, grows up too quickly and dreams. In a mixed and lively language whose sonority goes beyond the limits of the pages, the novelist gives life to violence and pain, resilience and cowardice, abuse and silences of the left behind, stuck in the vicious circle of insecurity and indifference.
Francis Ouellet casts a gaze full of tenderness on the colorful fauna of rue Poupart, giving it, through his child’s eyes, a part of grandeur and dignity, revealing as much the darkest part of his existence as the rays of light, of hope or of laughter that she sprinkled on her path.
In a style reminiscent of Romain Gary or, closer to us, Heather O’Neill, the author softens the rough edges of his story with the sweetness and liveliness of childhood imagination. Magical realism puts itself at the service of the narrator – but never obliterates the authenticity of the story, in all that is harshest and most unfair.
So don’t believe that this apprenticeship novel follows the traditional curve of emancipation with the smell of rose water. “Hope is a drunk tomcat who licks his own piss looking for leftover beer. […] To get out of the hole, you had to help others get out of it and by doing that, well, you stay in it. We existed outside the hole and in its depths, simultaneously, all the time. »
It is a story of courage, certainly, but a courage marked with cracks, which does not have the luxury of shortcuts or blindness. A promising first novel.