A young woman who disappears, her childhood friends eaten away by fear and guilt, her mother by sadness, a bar waitress who finds herself in spite of herself involved in this story, and a young journalist fascinated by crime documentaries who dreams of finally producing his own.
These voices intertwine to weave the web of the story of Secondary characters, second novel by Jeanne Dompierre. What happened that December evening when Chrystelle, after leaving her friends Sarah and Amaryllis at the exit of a bar in Montreal, never went to her car? The question haunts these secondary characters and awakens their own wounds.
Sitting on a crime story (there will be four women to disappear in similar circumstances over a period of one year), the story does not, however, have the essence of the traditional thriller. Although an inevitable resolution of the mystery is expected (and it will come), it is in the minds of the other protagonists of this choral novel that we are immersed. This narrative choice is very appropriate for this kind of story, bringing it a lot of depth, dynamism and breath. By entering the heads of the different narrators, we also become aware of the way each person looks at the others and the traumas that inhabit them. It is also a novel about the fragility of childhood friendships that evolve and, at times, wither.
By describing the fear that many women feel when walking alone at night, by reminding them that “there is one gang who don’t hesitate much before taking what they want without asking permission” and by evoking the #metoo movement, Secondary characters Above all, it is intended to be a feminist writing, both denouncing and liberating.
Secondary characters
Jeanne Dompierre
Quebec America
240 pages