It was 2019, when last I wrote about Marie-Claire Blais here: about A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (Trans. Derek Coltman) for the #1965Club.
It’s a skinny little novel, Emmanuel is a skinny little kid: it’s a powerful story about the forces that shape us, from family to church to imagination.
It was her fifth book, and Wikipedia tells me it won the Prix Médicis and the Prix Jean-Hamelin in 1976 and was nominated for Le Combat des livres in Quebec in 2008 (like “Survivor”, but for books). Her first, Mad Shadows (1959, translated by Merloyd Lawrence) was adapted into both a ballet and a film, nearly thirty years apart.
Despite all the hard work of translators, publishers, festival organisers, and various other literary folk, there remains a divide between French-language and English-language Canadian literature. Even key Francophone writers are not necessarily well-known in Anglo-Canada, even when they win major national literary awards, but in some ways Blais is better known overseas than in North America.
Pasha Malla, writing about Blais in “The New Yorker” asks: “Will American Readers Ever Catch on to Marie-Claire Blais?” His article was written about five years ago, but in an effort to place Blais with her contemporaries, he quotes Margaret Atwood on her first experience reading Blais:
“The book made me very uneasy, for more than the obvious reasons: the violence, the murders, suggestions of incest and the hallucinatory intensity of the writing were rare in Canadian literature in those days, but even scarier was the thought that this bloodcurdling fantasy, as well as its precocious verbal skill, were the products of a girl of 19. I was 19 myself, and with such an example before me I already felt like a late bloomer.”
In recent years I’ve read five of her novels (all in translation), but my first exposure to her was the first volume of what would become a ten-book-long cycle: Soifs, translated into English as These Festive Nights by Sheila Fischman (1995; 1997).
Browsing the library back then, even well-established writers like Blais were unrecognisable to me. So I had no thought in my mind when I borrowed this off the “new books” display, and I would have made my decision based on the title and cover—both illustration and description. (Malla notes that its literal translation is “Thirstings”.) Neither of those elements prepared me for what I found inside: the longest sentence I’d ever seen.
Malla describes the cycle like this: “The emotional texture of the novels, pitched between anxiety and longing, feels emphatically contemporary, but Blais’s style, in her later years, is mostly indebted to the modernists: the Woolf of “The Waves”; Proust, in his approach to recollection; Faulkner, in his use of polyphony.”
He notes contrasting and complex themes (from addiction to community, from love to the threat of nuclear annihilation), he does the math for us, noting that the works combined are more than two thousand pages. He describes her way of weaving the volumes together, by pointing out a group of drag queens who gather in the fifth volume, with their reappearance seven hundred pages later, in exactly the same location:
“Perhaps it’s the same instant, slightly recast, or the repetition of a ritual on a different night. But what is conveyed most strikingly is less the linear chronology of life than something like an eternal present, or the simultaneity of dreams.”
These novels are less focussed (than her other fiction) on contemporary horrors, Malla writes, and more on “the effects of those horrors on human consciousness” and they “seem both to encompass entire lives and to take place in the course of a single day.” The idea of their being more character-focussed appeals to me; even with experimental narratives, if I can hold onto a character, I can find a way into the story.
The tenth and final book in her Soifs series was published in French in 2018, and she died in 2021; it has just been published in English, Together by the Sea, translated by Katia Grubisic.
I never made it to the end of that first sentence I encountered in These Festive Nights back then, so this is my next attempt. (I don’t actually believe the book is written in a single sentence, and I’ll be embarrassed if I find it’s actually just many lines long and ends on the next page.)
When the series was in the midst of being translated, I picked up a copy of Mai, not realising it was part of the cycle, but some of the other books had fallen out of print. They’re all available now, and I’m set to begin. In this moment, I’m thinking about reading a book each month, but it’s hard to predict from this vantage point.
Blais herself left time between each volume (whether writing or publishing), which is an argument for easing the pace of this project. But I also love observing the kind of subtle interconnections that Malla describes, which is an argument for quickening the pace.
LMK if you have read these—or would like to—and, if not, I’d love to hear what cycles (or series) of stories you have read or plan to read.
- 1 Soifs (1995) Trans. Sheila Fischman as These Festive Nights (2018) 312p 9781487004583
- 2 Dans la foudre et la lumière (2001) Trans. Nigel Spencer as Thunder and Light (2019) 216p 9781487004255
- 3 Augustino et le chœur de la déstruction (2005) Trans. Nigel Spencer as Augustino and the Choir of Destruction (2007) 232p 9780887847523
- 4 Naissance de Rebecca à l’ère des tourments (2008) Trans. Nigel Spencer as Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom (2009) 216p 9780887848254
- 5 Mai au bal des prédateurs (2010) Trans. Nigel Spencer as Mai at the Predators’ Ball (2012) 256p 9781770890053
- 6 Le jeune homme sans avenir (2012) Trans. Nigel Spencer as Nothing for You Here, Young Man (2014) 232p 9781770893573
- 7 Aux jardins des Acacias (2014) Trans. Nigel Spencer as The Acacia Gardens (2016) 184p 9781487000172
- 8 Le festin au crépuscule (2015) Trans. Nigel Spencer as A Twilight Celebration (2019) 288p 9781487002480
- 9 Des chants pour Angel (2017) Trans. Katias Grubisic as Songs for Angel (2021) 184p 9781487006327
- 10 Une réunion près de la mer (2018) Trans. Katia Grubisic as Together by the Sea (2026)
306p 9781487006358
Soifs Series by Marie-Claire Blais (in translations by Sheila Fischman, Nigel Spencer, and Katia Grubisic): These Festive Nights | Thunder and Light | Augustino and the Choir of Destruction | Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom | Mai at the Predators’ Ball | Nothing for You Here, Young Man | The Acacia Gardens | A Twilight Celebration | Songs for Angel | Together by the Sea
Like Madame Bibi, I haven’t come across Marie-Claire Blais before, but I like that quote about the emotional tone of her novels being pitched between between anxiety and longing. It suggests a sense of tension in her work, a quality that often appeals to me.
For cycles / series, Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time is hard to beat (definitely one of the most rewarding reading experiences of my life), and Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War, which you’re reading with MB!
Me too! And that state feels like something one could observe, say, in Anita Brookner’s characters, or some of Elzabeth Taylor’s, or even Barbara Pym’s (but, less characteristically, maybe).
I was just chatting about those with Mme Bibi, saying that I will start buying the volumes individually as my quest for the boxed set hasn’t yielded anything second-hand yet (I was sure I’d seen them “around”, but couldn’t find one when I finally got serious about it); it’s definitely one I have in mind for later!
She’s an author I’ve never read at all, and I suspect basically everything I know about her comes from Edmund Wilson’s book on Canadian literature. I keep meaning to give her a try, though some of the descriptions of her stories make me wonder if she would be for me in the end.
I haven’t reached the end of the first sentence yet, so I share your uncertainty. Will this rhythm start to feel normal, I dunno. But increasingly, I feel as though descriptions aren’t matching the book I’m reading, so that part I’m trying to ignore. (I don’t know if that’s me, or marketing shifts.)
I’m more or less OK with long sentences–Hrabil, Enard, even Proust (though those *do* terminate)–it’s more the content I worry about–that it’s too darkly claustrophobic.
I have read (and hated, I’m afraid) A Season in the Life of Emmanuel. She’s like Herta Müller to me: certainly a great author but not one for me.
I enjoyed reading your post and thanks again for the good work to promote Québec lit.
/nods I can understand that, which is why I hesitated to recommend it when Stefanie asks in another comment for another recommendation. She shows such conviction in taking on the Church with a view of that family’s experience in that context, so one cannot help but admire her. And the language and the structure are skillfully employed: they serve the story perfectly. When I read it for the second time, I knew what I was in for, so I determined that I would sit and read it straight through in one sitting: to marvel but not be pulled into the sorrow so deeply.
Having said all that, I’ve been told that Soifs is something else entirely… so, we’ll see.
Reading Proust and Christina Stead while continuing to lose great slabs of reading time working, I cannot commit myself to any reading at all, outside of audiobooks, let alone to a ‘cycle’. And I continue to be astonished by the sheer volume of your reading, year after year.
Your post leads me to wonder what cycles or series (I am not going to think about the differences implied by those two terms) there are in Australian literary fiction. The only obvious one (obvious to me) is Miles Franklin writing as Brent of Bin Bin almost a century ago and which she said she should have named Up the Country instead of wasting that name on the first in the series.
Outside of literary fiction series are of course all the rage. I read mostly SF so I will cite as my example The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, though last year I’m sure I have you to blame for me pursuing (Canadian) Dennis E Taylor’s Bobiverse series.
It was perhaps too ambitious to put two major Quebecois cycles into the same reading year, but I’d been keeping them both in mind for so long that I didn’t feel I could choose between them (I had the Tremblays but haven’t bought all these).
Series and cycles are tricky: Tremblay’s is always called a cycle, but events proceed chronologically, so I think series would have been accurate; but it’s also not at all like Murderbot in that there is never a cliffhanger and much time passes between some volumes, so I can see why publishers are reluctant to invoke that term. Not sure about Blais yet. Mostly, though, I think I’ve read series rather than cycles? All genre, too, I think?
I think that might have been via an article I shared with you by Canadian journalist Don Curran via Bluesky? As part of his project to explore CanLitSF?
Hi Bill, I would recommend the Tremblay series. I think you’d like these books.
Thanks Emma, I’ll take that on board. But I just got to p.1000 of Proust this morning, so I still have two or three thousand to go, and probably a couple of thousand pages to finish Christina Stead, as well.
It was hard to read Tremblay alongside Proust; so many echoes that I’d muddle up the experiences and scenes and, with the second volume, I started to pause Proust for Tremblay. Even if your dance card didn’t feel full, it would make sense to wait.
Is a trilogy a cycle? Like The fortunes of Richard Mahoney?
I can think of many series – crime series that is! – by Australian writers, but that doesn’t count.
I found this point – there remains a divide between French-language and English-language Canadian literature – interesting, but probably not surprising. The majority of readers do tend to stick to their own corners it seems. I don’t think most in my reading group is much aware of First Nations writing outside the award-winners and those we select for our annual July (NAIDOC Week/First Nations culture) read. A different example I guess but similar too?
I haven’t read that one and regularly check my shelves because I never remember if I have it! (And then forget again. Obviously I just need to read it. /wrylaugh).
There is a romance series by Alyssa Cole that is always billed as a series but I think it’s more of a cycle (each book focusses on a different character rather than carrying on a timeline). But mysteries do seem the ideal serial example.
Yes! Similar in that, by numbers, both cultures are minorities in comparison with the anglephone and settler communities, and that many readers complain that all “those stories” are “all the same” so why read them. Most Anglophone Canadians were probably assigned one play or novel by a Quebecois writer as literature in schooldays (and, in translation, at that) even if they did attend in a place where Canadian writers made it onto the curricumulum, and now there is a similar tokenist response to Indigenous writers (but there is an elective course dedicated to Indigilit in the works, currently in select schools).
My Canadian author wishlist is growing and growing and growing – all thanks to you 🙂
And I know you love a… substantial… reading project as much as I do. hee hee
Jeez I feel awful admitting I didn’t know she has passed away! How sad, she was such a fantastic writer, and didn’t get the attention she deserved.
I subscribe to the SHUSH newsletter which analyzes Canadian publishing, and just a few weeks ago there was analysis on the English-language vs French langauge publishing model in Canada, which was FASCINATING to read about. It helped me understand a bit more about why Blais is so underrated amongst English readers, even here in Canada.
It’s unfortunate that it’s so easy to miss this kind of news: I often do too! Ironically, though, discovering that we’ve missed “something big” like this can also help us rethink what we pay attention to and what we overlook. And, while we are publishing to our own platforms, what we choose to focus on and what we don’t. Thanks for rec’ing SHuSH, I’m not sub’d and am always looking for good rec’s there; I do know what you mean though, I feel as though there have been a handful of articles and interviews that I felt really “unlocked” the reasons why the relationship between French-language lit and English-language lit in Canada is so fraught and complex. That feeling of “oohhh, I get it now”.
Oh I am intrigued by this! My library has These Festive Nights and it has 3 ratings giving it an average of 3/12stars out of 5. Only one person in 2011 felt compelled to write a comment and this is what they said: “This book is written in a style that is just one long run-on sentence. No punctuation whatsoever. Not sure if this is a style of writing but is practically impossible to read without a lot of frustration.” Since I love Woolf, and Henry James whose sentences go on for pages and pages, I think I would not be bothered by this except when I had to put the book down–no natural place to stop! 😀
If I want to give Blais a try before leaping into Soifs, what do you recommend?
Her work is usually succinct and her style the sort that I associate with poets–spare, polished, every single word counts–so I would prioritise accessibility over a specific title if you would like to sample her work (i.e. whatever you can find heheh, whatever summary appeals). But I have seen soooo many cover images for Soifs that I think, if one were to accept she’s untraditional, it might turn out to be the place to begin? (She says, not having begun yet.) I’m thinking about books like Rakesfall for instance, which I found so disorienting but you found it less so?
Rakesfall was totally disorienting for me too but that’s one of the things I liked about it 🙂 So I will dive in with Festive Nights one of these days.
Ahhh, ok: I understand that, yes.
Well, I will plan to post on the first two volumes at least.
All I can say at this point, is that it’s not proving to be a good mix with the other books in my stack.
In that sense, she feels like Lispector to me (so far)…
This author and cycle have completely passed me by.
I keep meaning to try and read Dorothy Richardson’s Pilgrimage series, but I’m a bit put off by the people I know who’ve read it who have all said that it starts well and becomes increasingly impenetrable…
From what Malla says about this one, it sounds like the opposite: there might be moments of confusion early but things coallesce later? But I dunno…
With Pilgrimage, I found the first couple volumes fairly accessible, which seems to back part of the story you’ve heard. It’s rather intimidating…