Before Joneshis third book, Montreal writer Neil Smith, finalist for the Governor General’s Award for his translation of The Goddess of Fireflies by Geneviève Pettersen, had never wanted to explore the wounds of her childhood. Repressing his anger, he had preferred to escape to his imaginary world in big Bang (Les Allusifs, 2007), a collection of short stories in which he flirted with different genres, and boo (Alto, 2015), a novel in which he portrayed a 13-year-old boy finding himself in the afterlife. Then, one day, he realized that he had to put down on paper what had been bothering him for so many years. The result is a novel that hits you like a punch in the plexus.
Neither autofiction nor autobiographical novel, Jones, which the author dedicates to the memory of his sister Gail, transports us from the 1970s to the 1990s in the footsteps of a dysfunctional Montreal family, which, like the Smith family, lived in various American cities. “The only time Eli felt safe was when he was a kid in Verdun. At the time, Pal was already drinking like a hole, but not yet like a chasm. »
Wherever they move, Pal, a Korean War veteran, Joy, a mother unable to care for her children, Abi, who suffers from an eating disorder, and Eli, a hypersensitive, carry with them heavy family secrets sticking to their skin. “The same good old Jones living in the same good old Jones Town,” Abi said. Where they drink the same good old Kool-Aid. »
While Neil Smith sketches devastating and merciless portraits of the parents, to whom he refuses any redemption, he shows a fierce tenderness, an unbridled fantasy and an irresistible dark humor to describe the bonds uniting the children, which in places evoke Mille Milles and Chateaugué du Nose that evokes by Ducharme. With an overflowing imagination, left to themselves, Abi and Eli dream of settling in New York, where the teenager could follow in the footsteps of her idol, the photographer Diane Arbus. However, this great escape project could well hide disastrous motives. In the meantime, they indulge in experiments on other young people as if they wanted to smear them in order to no longer be the only ones to bear the weight of their parents’ flaws.
“That evening, at the foot of a mountain range, the brother and sister will get six Osmonds drunk with whisky. Osmond, the name of a good family of singers in Utah, is the name that Abi gives to all Mormons (and all her life she will call “Jones” the beggars, drunks and madmen she sees in the street). »
Centering his story on Eli, his alter ego who finds solace in the texts he translates, Neil Smith delivers a cathartic account in which he tackles themes as scabrous as incest and violence against children, as delicate as mental illness. , alcoholism and drug addiction, without ever lapsing into misery or pathos. On the contrary, Jones is both a vibrant celebration of the power of imagination and creative writing and a powerful ode to resilience.