To enter a Lisa Moore novel is to set foot in St. John’s, Newfoundland, and leave your heart there forever. More than poetic descriptions of landscapes and atmospheres, his writings anchor the reader within the very heart of a tightly knit community — populated by larger-than-life characters and crucial, but ordinary, reflections — of which, rather than being relegated to the role of witness, he becomes a stakeholder.
“Each place, town or village, has its own culture,” says the writer, joined by THE Duty in the heart of the Newfoundland winter. Here, residents know each other across generations. Even newcomers quickly become part of this culture, because, perhaps because of the cold and the danger of resource extraction, we need each other. »
In How to lovethis entire beautiful community is put to the test when a devastating storm — a reference to the historic blizzard Snowmageddon of 2020 — descends on the city, depriving residents of essential resources. One evening, leaving a party, Xavier, 21, is stabbed and left for dead in a snow bank.
Joined in Mexico where she is spending her vacation, her mother, Jules, returns in disaster, determined to cross the barricaded city to get to the bedside of her son, plunged into a coma. Consumed by anxiety and incomprehension, Jules searches the past of Xavier and those close to him for the source of such rage.
“Over the past fifteen years, in Newfoundland, we have seen a significant increase in gun violence, mostly perpetrated by young men. It led me to think about the pressure that weighs on society, the hegemony of the 1%, the political divide and the increase in the cost of living, which lead many people to the edge of the abyss, threaten our fashions of life and force us to turn our backs on others and distance ourselves from empathy. I wanted to imagine ways to improve things,” explains the author.
The bursting of love
Through a kaleidoscopic and polyphonic story, Lisa Moore voices the voices of several characters who have influenced Xavier’s life over the generations: parents, grandparents, aunts, brothers, friends, children wanted or neglected, lost or saved, deploying in a great prism of love, sacrifice, generosity and mourning.
Fragment by fragment, the novelist reconstructs the story of a fragile clan, confronted with the radical nature of love. “We don’t always choose who we love — it often falls to us — but we can make the decision to love as much as possible and to offer that love to everyone who comes into our lives. It is our responsibility to open our emotional circle. It’s difficult, but it seems more and more urgent to me to be able to love even those who are completely different from us,” she emphasizes.
As the notion of family is redefined, this bursting of love becomes more and more essential. “Today, many young men and women do not want to have children, because of the perpetual state of crisis in which the world finds itself. We must let more people into this institution that we call “family”, reinvent it, create other ways of expressing love across time and generations, get away from a normative vision that breaks people rather than to raise them. »
Cultivate empathy
Lisa Moore’s novel provides a fine demonstration of how an individual is made up of both those around him and those who came before him, that love, generosity and care are transmitted in the same way. as violence, precariousness and neglect. “We like to think that violence, since it is difficult to articulate, is arbitrary, that it can visit anyone at any time. In fact, it is the result of a social pressure that can easily be traced, perpetuated by people who experience frustration over generations, because they are deprived of the simplest resources, such as housing, food or love. »
To cultivate the empathy she advocates, Lisa Moore also chooses to approach Xavier’s story from different points of view. “Point of view is one of the most powerful tools a writer has. It allows a form of creative democracy. What would the world look like if we could enter into the thoughts of others, if everyone was given a voice and time to speak? Obviously, reality is not constructed this way. There are a ton of people you never hear from. It is a privilege and a great power to try to imagine how strangers experience and feel about the world. »
With How to love, the author delivers her most modern novel. Throughout the pages, the reader can follow in the footsteps of the characters as if it were his own, without feeling any dissonance between the air he breathes, his way of speaking, his concerns, the state of his world and those of Xavier and his family; a rarer feat than it seems. “My two previous novels were set in the past, and I felt immense freedom in exploring the moment in which we are immersed. I felt like I was hunting, preparing the ground for what awaits us in this risky and fragile world that we must reinvent every day. »