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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I'm glad I've been working on reading French. He is my new favourite writer, or at least my new favourite autobiographical to semi-autobiographical writer.
But wait, wait, Claude, juste une chose: you want Quebec to separate from Canada - and to be honest, I don't really care what the ground under me is called as long as it's livable - but if it did, what would happen to the Maritimes? Think about it, Monsieur Jasmin. It would be a pain in the butt for people in the Eastern provinces to get their passports out every time they go west. It would be like living in Alaska. But maybe it's really nice living in Alaska. I don't know.
At least his ideas are more palatable to me than some of Orson Scott Card's, and I love the Ender series to death. (That's why it's dead now. I killed it with a silly cliché. I'm sorry.)
"Anita, une fille numérotée" is sad and deceptively simple and brilliant. The narrator struggles against others' prejudice the whole way through (his dad, for one, isn't too thrilled his new girlfriend is Jewish) and then falls victim to a kind of prejudice near the end, based on a rumour that may or may not be true.
I started reading "Des branches de jasmin" based on Jasmin's experience babysitting his grandsons - and, entretemps, commenting on world news of the late 80s to 90s and trying to understand quantum physics. The part where he convinces the boys that there's a dragon in a Laurentian lake (in a place not far off from Grandpa's cottage - I mean the place my grandfather bequeathed to my mom and uncles - which I visited on Sunday (and you say you like simple sentences, e_o_i??)) made me laugh out loud. Anyway, I went to the library to renew the book today, but someone had reserved it, so I noted the page (57, lest I forget) and said goodbye to it for a couple of weeks.
Parting is such sweet sorrow, Claude. Je t'aime. Not in a creepy way - don't get the wrong idea. In the meantime, vive la Québec whatever!
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