It’s a well-known story told by Catherine Larochelle in her first novel, I will go and dig up my father : a young woman condemned by the crab that gnaws at her, a family dislocated after the suicide of the father, a passionate love relationship where doubts gradually creep in.
Posted at 12:00 p.m.
But with her lively and colorful pen (“I drove in the parking lot of the flower market leaving petals of skin and bouquets of hair there”), the graduate of the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique du Québec moves away from the cliché. to touch on the universal, and offers a very convincing first effort.
We meet Charlie, a character who is endearing, exuberant and exasperating at the same time, who still carries within her her childhood anxieties. She is still in mourning for her father and terrified of death, which she tries to subdue with enumerations and lists to ward off fate and fix reality, while everything is going to hell.
Modern Phèdre, she will embark on a race against death to free her father, whose ghost accompanies her, from the earth where he was buried, determined to scatter his ashes to any wind. Impossible to remain dry-eyed while turning the pages of this novel which, despite its dark subject, is also filled with light.
I will go and dig up my father
Catherine Larochelle
Quebec America
232 pages