François, a man retired to the hinterland of Montmagny after the tragic disappearance of his daughter, tells, during an evening at Resto Chez Mado, the stories he invents to overcome loneliness, embroidering, tale by tale, a quilt formed from the dislocated pieces of his soul. In a language as broad as the landscape it travels through, Jean-François Caron brings to life fabulous characters—coureurs des bois, truckers, jackalopes and taxidermists. Taciturn and gentle men and mysterious and somewhat witchy women find tenderness and gentleness in the rusticity of the territory, the cruel poetry of the wild beasts, the agonizing secrets of the forests and the patience of the trap. In standing timber (La Peuplade, 2017), his previous novel, the writer made literature a refuge, with all that entails of traps and magic. With handsome devil, she is brought into the world, arms and heart open to the other, a clearing sublimated by breakthroughs of light and tenderness. A novel that, like love, brings us back to basics.
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