Let’s get lost (one line with sub if fits)
Dropping out with Guillaume Vigneault
Book Review
NECESSARY BETRAYALS
by Guillaume Vigneault
translated by Susan Ouriou
Douglas & McIntyre, 188 pp.
WordFest runs full tilt this weekend. Discovering up-and-coming authors is one of a reader’s recurring pleasures at the annual book bash. For me, this year’s find is Montreal’s Guillaume Vigneault. His second novel, Chercher le vent, is translated by Calgary-based Susan Ouriou as Necessary Betrayals.
The story of Jack, a pilot and photographer, Necessary Betrayals is a lean triptych with heart. His ex’s younger brother, the shit disturber Tristan, urges Jack to hit the road. Fate introduces them to Nuna, a femme fatale from Barcelona. Their odyssey begins at a Montreal psychiatric hospital, lingers at a Quebec cottage, heads stateside to Bar Harbor on the Maine coast, then rapidly on to Florida, Louisiana and New York. While Necessary Betrayals depends on Jack’s Buick to keep the story going, it’s the secluded lull in Quebec, Maine and Louisiana that somehow fuels this novel.
Early on, Vigneault writes, "In the middle of the lake in the opaque dawn mist, a sick feeling suddenly settled over me. As though I was no longer welcome in the diaphanous silk core, in the half-water, half-air placenta. The sweet absenting of myself from the world suddenly made me dizzy and turned my stomach."
This "sweet absenting" from Jack’s dual calling as pilot and photographer gives the novel its gravity. It connects the seemingly random geography of the book and complements Jack’s world-weary narration. "A shower is to infidelity what an undertaker’s make-up is to a cadaver: a touching attempt," Jack says. Sentences like this jump out and hint at the four or five sublime paragraphs to come, lodestars tucked into the story’s midst.
Like a good road trip, Necessary Betrayals has secrets in store – and more.
Guillaume Vigneault reads three times during WordFest: Friday, October 18 at the Uptown Stage at 7 p.m., Saturday, October 19 at Memorial Park Library at 3 p.m. (presented in French) and Sunday, October 20 at The Banff Centre at 11 a.m. |
