The novelist François Blais, author of humor and intelligence matched only by his discretion, died on the night of Friday to Saturday, at his home in Charette in Mauricie. He was 49 years old.
Posted at 12:20 p.m.
The news, first relayed on social networks by comedian Rémi-Pierre Paquin, was confirmed to The Press Sunday morning by Geneviève Pigeon, the literary director of Éditions de L’instant meme, where the writer has published almost all of her work.
“It was sunny yesterday morning when I found out, it was bright outside and suddenly I stopped breathing. I can not believe. I just don’t believe it. It is a voice that could not be extinguished, ”said the one who had worked with the writer for more than fifteen years. “His death was his own decision,” she added, her voice choking with emotion.
Author of a dozen novels and a few children’s books, François Blais soon became Ifigenia in Upper Town (2006), but especially with Handout 1 (2012), a recognizable writer in a few sentences. His characters have often been described as losers, but it would have been more accurate to describe them as passive resistance fighters, who try to imagine themselves on the margins of a society where conformity dominates a happiness that resembles them.
Also a columnist at the magazine Protect yourself, François Blais worked as a concierge at night at the Les Rivières shopping center in Trois-Rivières. With his most recent novel, The only thing that interests everyone, François Blais had for the first time measured up to the science fiction genre, without managing to hide his inimitable style, a mixture of false nonchalance and astonishing erudition.
Little inclined to perform or to play the game of literary worldliness, the author kept a low profile in the media and very rarely granted interviews. Born in Grand-Mère, François Blais lived in Quebec for a long time, but had returned in 2015 to settle in his native Mauricie, in Charette, where he lived with his sister as well as with their dogs, their goats, their cats, their hens and their parakeet.