When he was 7, Melikah Abdelmoumen’s son made a PowerPoint presentation about his mother’s career, noting that she was the author of novels whose main character was always a “problematic woman.” When she had him read the final manuscript of her new project, Small Townit was with a wink that she announced to him that yes, the story was still about a woman torn between her demons.
But, even if the anecdote is worth the detour, it would be very stupid to summarize Small Town — seventh novel by the Quebec writer born in Chicoutimi, but first since Adele and Lee (Émoticourt), in 2013, and the three essays that followed it (Twelve years in France [VLB, 2018], Baldwin, Styron and Me [Mémoire d’encrier, 2021] And Ordinary commitments [Mémoire d’encrier, 2023]) — to the misfortunes of its protagonist.
Eminently complex, flirting with the detective story, the political thriller and the supernatural, this ambitious story constitutes the sum of all the struggles, commitments, speeches and obsessions of Mélikah Abdelmoumen, and this, without ever – miraculously – sinking into didacticism, morality or repetition.
The novelist had been working on this project for over ten years. It was during a viewing of the film in 2006 that The Electric Mist by Bertrand Tavernier, in which an investigator sees and has conversations with Confederate soldiers who died in Louisiana, that she was inspired to write a book that would be both extremely well told, but also carry a political and social charge.
“Then I discovered some masterful crime writers; James Sallis, James Ellroy, George Pelecanos and Dennis Lehane. In 2014, at the Quais du Polar festival in Lyon, I bought a black moleskin notebook with a gun on it. And I started writing this crime novel I had been dreaming of. But I wasn’t really ready… I think writing my three essays was necessary so that I could address the issues that interest me in a novel format. I wanted something like The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King. How do they achieve this feat of saying so much about our society without telling us what to think? And it took me ten years to be able to do it my way.”
Between intrigue and militancy
The novel tells the story of Mia and Simon, two orphans born in the Zone, a poor and segregated suburb of Petite-Ville, in which the inhabitants are stuck in the vicious circle of precariousness, violence and exclusion. Both adopted by Annick, a social worker, they grow up and forge opposite destinies, remaining however linked by a burning love.
When Simon, who has become a committed journalist and writer, is found dead in the park built on the ruins of the Zone, Mia is drawn, in spite of herself, into an investigation which will involve ghosts, polemicists and social services.
With Small TownMélikah Abdelmoumen weaves the thread of a gripping plot in which the portrait of modern Western cities is sketched. Through the journey of her characters, she attests to the role of living environments in the perpetuation of inequalities, injustices and poverty — a living environment that could just as easily be Montreal as Lyon, Chicago or New Orleans.
” Small Town is a creation composed from all the places I have lived in and that have lived in me, because I have traveled through them or seen and read them through the eyes of other creators. If I had chosen a particular place, I would not have been able to encapsulate everything I had witnessed. Then, I did not want to write a novel about journalism and gentrification in Quebec, I wanted to allow myself something freer than that.
Through Simon’s activism and Mia’s discoveries, the author highlights the struggles and themes that have occupied her life and her work, including systemic racism, the trap of indifference, media convergence, the lack of political vision and the importance of encounter and dialogue.
She also vehemently attacks the myth of meritocracy. “People work by the sweat of their brow and barely manage to feed their children and pay their rent. How can they hope to get by? The system is not designed to help them, and they are looked at with a kind of condescension, as if they should deserve state aid. There are several French sociologists who have helped me understand a lot, including Éric Fassin and Bernard Lahire, who explain that meritocracy serves above all so that those who have a lot are comfortable being in their position and feel that they deserve it. This is one of the things that scandalizes me the most in the world.”
Freedom of imagination
To address all of these issues and highlight their intersectionality, Mélikah Abdelmoumen chose a fragmented structure, which oscillates between a first-person narration in the form of a non-linear mosaic — “that’s how I think” — and excerpts from newspapers and documents that relate Simon’s life and commitment. “I knew from the beginning that I wanted to borrow from Anglo-Saxon literature, which often uses this process, particularly in detective novels, of including false documents throughout the story. In addition to bringing new elements to the plot, it allowed me to add a touch of derision that de-dramatized the darkness of the situation while giving humanity to the characters. Humor is also an excellent way to criticize the world.”
By twisting the codes of the detective novel and allowing herself the luxury of freedom, the writer also allowed herself to mix genres, adding a touch of fantasy and spirituality to a story in which the ghost of a deceased person constantly floats. “At first, I was rather hesitant. Then, I read Gary Victor’s voodoo thrillers, and I understood that we could completely blur the line between the dead and the living. My editor, Rodney Saint-Éloi, helped me to follow my idea through, to get out of my white, Cartesian Western culture, and to let myself be invaded by other imaginations than those that were transmitted to me. It was extremely liberating.”
Returning to the novel, the author fully realizes the impact that this genre can have in comparison to other forms. “I really don’t think that literature necessarily has to be useful. I first wrote this story because I like to tell stories and make people laugh. But I think that books can be a way, not necessarily to change policies, but to change the demands of the people who read, by allowing them, without necessarily making them change their mind, to better understand another point of view. When I wrote Twelve years in Franceabout a Roma family I was helping, I felt like I was moving from microaction to macroaction through writing. This time, the detective novel is an extraordinary vehicle to make people think about the world as it is, in all its beauty and ugliness, and to reach people just by telling them a good story.