The blue sky never shines in Toronto. At least not for those – especially those – who have fallen through the cracks of its social net.
Curled up on a soiled mattress hidden in a smelly alley or wandering the muddy city streets in search of the next fix, the female characters of Toronto never bluethird novel by Marie-Hélène Larochelle (Daniil and Vanya, I follow the flow of mud), do not have the right to dreams. The only paradises allowed to them are artificial and do not allow them to escape for long from this filthy life which is theirs.
Infected wounds, clogged bodies, smelly bodily fluids, dirty hair drooling with saliva, Larochelle’s writing, very evocative and carnal, rubs in the reader’s face this nauseating reality that we prefer to ignore. These women, fiercely free in their refusal to compromise, are nevertheless prisoners: of men, of their lives shattered for a long time, of this city which spits them out again and again on the same shore. Human suffering and the monstrosity that crawls through the mazes of the city are exposed in harsh light. A few glimmers – not hope, but respite – here and there. But there is no illusion: there is no light at the end of the tunnel.
The reading shocks us with its frontality and the discomfort it causes, but is paradoxically imbued with such sensitivity that it is impossible to remain indifferent to the destinies of these women, while the questions of homelessness and human distress are burning news.
Toronto never blue
Leméac
200 pages