In Francoise last (Le Quartanier, 2018), second novel by Daniel Grenier, a teenager from the suburbs of Montreal undertook, at the end of the 1990s, a great pilgrimage across America to meet Helen Klaben, this woman who , thirty years earlier, had survived 49 days in a Yukon forest after his plane crashed.
With Heroines and tombs, to be published this week in bookstores, the writer takes up the contours of the universe sketched in his previous book – as well as certain secondary characters – to catapult himself twenty years later, into the depths of Brazil; a sequel that, on the narrative level, does very well without the book that precedes it. “I felt the need to create an expanding universe, which takes shape from one novel to another, explains Daniel Grenier. While the first was a more conventional adventure story in form, the second is much more splintered, almost esoteric. It is an extension of the same universe. »
The story therefore revolves around Alexandra, a young woman who, in the previous novel, had walked alongside Françoise for a few days during her journey. Now a journalist, she travels to Uruguaiana, Brazil, to shed light on the mysterious disappearance of writer Ambrose Bierce, which occurred a century earlier. She will find herself in spite of herself in the dark and perilous universe of a mysterious sect.
Tribute to Ernesto Sabato
Daniel Grenier borrowed the idea of an expanding universe from the Argentinian writer Ernesto Sábato, whose three unique novels form the Buenos Aires trilogy.
It is no coincidence that the title of Daniel Grenier’s new book seems familiar. It directly refers to the second opus of this trilogy, Heroes and Graves (1961), going so far as to take up its structure, codes and themes. “More than a tribute, my novel is a palimpsest of Sábato’s work. I literally inserted my novel inside his, I divided it in the same way, with the same number of parts and chapters. »
Like Sábato, Daniel Grenier transforms the quest of his characters, the maze, borders, architecture and language of a city into mirrors of the human condition. Like Sábato, he inserts in his novel a report written by a paranoid and exalted character, which introduces a hypothesis present throughout the book: that of the plot led by a sect that seeks to dominate the world.
The sect of the blind imagined by the Argentine novelist here becomes a cannibalistic sect, an opportunity for the Quebecer to exploit his fascination for literary cannibalism and Manifesto Antropofago (1929) by Oswald de Andrade; a fundamental reading for the constitution of contemporary Brazilian identity. “The writing of this novel was guided by my obsessions. I am passionate about Brazil, the Portuguese language and Brazilian literature. »
Take territory head-on
The author therefore continues the exploration of the American territory begun in his first novel, The longest year (Le Quartanier, 2015), this time extending his imagination beyond the borders of North America.
“I have often recognized myself in the Brazilian experience. If there’s one country in Latin America that can understand Quebec’s island situation, it’s it. They are surrounded by the Spanish language and the Spanish-speaking culture, and this influences, as here, their way of conceiving themselves. It’s also a reflex for me not to go to Europe, which is at the center of Western literature. »
THE Cannibal manifesto at the heart of the story is the result of an artistic movement which, in the 1920s, wished to rethink the cultural dependence of Brazil and advocated the appropriation and imitation of foreign cultures. “Only interests me what is not mine”, quotes Daniel Grenier as an epigraph toHeroines and tombs. He thus raises the question of the responsibility of those who choose to tell the stories of others.
“It’s a reflection that lives in me and that I’ve been trying for a long time to put into words. The novel reflects my own heartbreak, my questioning about what fiction is asked to do versus what it has the right to do. These discussions, which we are currently holding a little in hostility, do not bully me, personally, as a writer. On the contrary, they turn out to be very fruitful. »
As well as a sect seeking world domination, cannibalism spreads like wildfire in Daniel Grenier’s novel when a virus that affects people’s taste and smell causes them to devour. A nod to the pandemic, but above all a way for the novelist to push his questions about cultural appropriation to the extreme.
“Brazil is not the only country in Latin America to have wanted to imagine a post-racial culture, detached from Europe. This construction still corresponds to the vision that Westerners, the Whites, had of themselves, and their relationship with the indigenous tribes. Today, the polarization in Brazil demonstrates that this narrative is cracking everywhere. I make a symbolic link with Quebec. We too have difficulty managing our national narrative. For the first time since the Conquest, we are being told that the vision of eternal victim that we have of ourselves may not be realistic. »
True to his habits, the writer intertwines reality and literature, fictionalizes writers and their works and enjoys strewing his novel with cultural references, which fit organically into the adventure story he has concocted. “My goal is really not to write a cryptic and indigestible novel. I like the idea that readers can experience pleasure and embark on the story without knowing these references. But it also amuses me to offer the possibility of digging in all directions, and of pushing further certain reflections of the book on the relationship between true and false, between reality and likelihood. »