If you turned 20 in Montreal in the 1990s, this book is for you. It will speak to you, not nearly. Do you want Black Mondays (at Les Foufs), secret codes (on your pagers) or poutines at Rapido, here you go!
Julie Bosman, to whom we already owe two novels and a collection of short stories, does not skimp on memories in So that tomorrow takes hold of usa text anchored in the 1990s, it will have been understood, in which three somewhat lost friends get drunk and dope, in short, seek each other.
We follow them through different key years: 1998, back in 1989, then in 1990, 1991, 1992, to end in 1999, on the eve of the year 2000 (and its aborted bug).
Not much happens in their life, and at the same time, everything happens. I named: the Chantale Daigle affair, the Polytechnique massacre, but also the fall of the Berlin wall and the Gulf war, to such an extent that at times (read: often), historical winks take over the story.
No matter, we let ourselves be nostalgically caught up in the game, to the sound of Bérurier noir or Radiohead (but also Beck, Jean Leloup, Daniel Bélanger, Pink Floyd, the allusions are squarely assigned a page of “credits of the songs cited”), remembering that time not so long ago when you could still find 5 1/2s on the Plateau at $200 (all included!), when the minimum wage was $5.30, and you drank Black Passport label.
Not much is going on, as we said, but the attention to detail and historical reminders (unusual news from the period included) are well worth it, if, as for us, the simple evocation of a mixtapeBouchard’s anti-smoking law or a summer spent planting trees brings back endless memories.
So that tomorrow takes hold of us
Julie Bosmann
Lemeac
203 pages