It is the story of a street, a neighborhood and its residents. Of a bygone era, too, in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s native Romania. This is a bit of all that the first novel by Laura Nicolae, Escalei Streetwhich has just won the Robert-Cliche prize and is arriving in bookstores this Wednesday.
Andronache, in Bucharest, is neither a central neighbourhood nor a neighbourhood where big decisions are made, explains the author, who grew up in Romania and has lived in Montreal since university. But its old-fashioned charm reminds her of the green alleys of the Plateau Mont-Royal, in a way.
“It’s a neighborhood that, 100 years ago, was outside the city. Urban sprawl meant that, quietly, during the 1920s and 1930s, the village was swallowed up,” she emphasizes.
During the 1970s, the period she chose to set her novel, this area of the Romanian capital seemed like a real labyrinth to anyone who didn’t live there. “There was something very bucolic about that time. And that means that in my story, which is actually about life during communism, this place was like a kind of preserved island. I wanted to give this impression that time or the change of political regime doesn’t have as much influence on certain places.”
Between nostalgia and stories of alleys
In this small Escalei street, time seems to stand still. As the novel opens, Comrade Popescu is found unconscious in the nearby cornfield, following an assault. As the head of the investigation and his intern question the people in the neighborhood, we meet the inhabitants of the neighborhood: children raised by their grandparents who spend their days wandering the alleys, women carrying the burden of several generations or veterans marked by war.
Escalei Street brings back to life this village life a few steps from the city center, in a mixture of sweet nostalgia, stories of alleys and neighborhood quarrels. With all that it entails in terms of traditions, superstitions and contradictions, so similar to those found in several Mediterranean countries.
“I wanted to tell the story of Romania as I knew it as a child. A southern country, a Latin country where people are very sociable, good-natured. Where neighbors are a bit like part of the family, with all the good and bad that can have: we help each other, but we also spy on each other,” says Laura Nicolae, laughing.
My goal was to highlight the fact that even during times of crisis, political and social changes, we find a way to preserve beautiful values, to be generous, to raise children, to show love and empathy. The idea was also to present communist Romania with this hidden, very private culture, which has kept humanism and the values of the people alive.
Laura Nicolae
Laura Nicolae’s Romania is also the one that allowed her to discover the great French classics – from Molière to Balzac – when books were the only way to learn and be entertained in a country where all television culture, in particular, was “infused and soaked in propaganda”.
One thing led to another, and this passion allowed her to land a scholarship at Université Laval to specialize in Quebec literature. “In my head, I came to Quebec for eight months. And here I am now, 25 years later.” Teaching French literature at CEGEP, while sharing her life with a Quebecer who has ancestors on Île d’Orléans.
Every year, she continues to return to her homeland to visit her parents and sister. And in her dearest dreams, she plans to write again about the Romania of her childhood. “But my life and my career are here,” says Laura Nicolae. “A life more beautiful than the one I could have dreamed of.”
Intertwined destinies
The Robert-Cliche prize, which has been awarded to authors of a first novel for over 40 years, has been awarded in recent years to writers such as Roxanne Bouchard and Paul Serge Forest (for Everything is original). This year, the jury was formed by the journalist Duty Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec, of the bookseller at Monet Mike Vienneau as well as the author and sociologist Caroline Dawson, who passed away last May. She described Escalei Street of “an important, very evocative book” whose characters are so endearing that one has “a sincere pang in the heart” when leaving them. Laura Nicolae did not have the chance to meet her, but their paths crossed without her knowing: “I was not even aware that she was on the jury and while she was reading my manuscript, I was reading her book [Là où je me terre]. Life is magical like that, sometimes.”
Escalei Street
VLB publisher
408 pages