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myriam_dubuc's review against another edition
5.0
Romain doit quitter sans explications son petit village gaspésien à l'âge de 17 ans. Il se réfugie à New York où il s'ouvre à la culture et à l'art des années 60, est initié au féminisme et doit prendre position au sujet de la guerre du vietnam. Il a une vie dont les tournants sont tous à angle droit, mais en tout temps il continue de suivre ses valeurs (amitié, loyauté, compassion, liberté individuelle) et sa recherche de l'authenticité. Toute son histoire dénonce la fausse pureté d'âme que certains affichent en se permettant de juger les autres. Très bien écrit! Bravo!!
infinite_kay's review against another edition
3.0
C'est un 3 allant vers le 3.5 pour moi! J'ai beaucoup aimé la plume de l'auteure, peut-être parce que son style tout en longues phrases me rappelle un peu celui de ma prose, qui sait! Ayant grandi dans le Bas-St-Laurent et vécu à Rimouski et Métis, j'étais également plutôt enjouée à l'idée d'une histoire qui intègre ces lieux chéris. Au-delà de cela toutefois, j'aurais aimé un peu plus d'intrigue et un peu moins de blabla de la part du narrateur, qui de toute évidence aime bien se perdre dans sa propre histoire.
lynnefaubert's review against another edition
3.0
Voilà un livre bien ambitieux, un ouvrage qui survole les générations et les événements d'actualité, pour un roman québécois, chapeau. J'ai eu pas mal de difficulté à embarquer, cela dit, ce personnage de Romain Carrier ne m'étant pas super symathique. J'ai dû m'y prendre à trois fois... Les personnages n'ont pas l'obligation de nous faire les aimer, donc j'ai persisté.
Ce que j'ai aimé? Le survol historique, les choix romanesques, le souffle. Comment l'auteure transforme l'histoire en anecdotes vivantes, un parti-pris dynamique et de toute évidence très volontaire (ça me rappelait beaucoup John Irving tout cela).
Ce qui m'a déplu? Le style inégal, parfois si bien ficelé, d'autres fois si artificiels. Quand un personnage explique: "Froissé par son insensibilité, je lui ai répondu...", impossible de ne pas décrocher devant une telle tournure dans la bouche d'un personnage.
Par contre, avec tout ce qui lui arrive, il y avait chez Romain une grande passivité, l'homme subit beaucoup les autres et les événements, de façon énervante pour le lecteur. Et le coup fourré de la fin, over the top comme disent les anglos, impossible d'y croire. Jugement dernier à la sauce télé réalité.
Bref, une lecture qui à peine terminée me laisse perplexe. C'était correct, quoi.
Ce que j'ai aimé? Le survol historique, les choix romanesques, le souffle. Comment l'auteure transforme l'histoire en anecdotes vivantes, un parti-pris dynamique et de toute évidence très volontaire (ça me rappelait beaucoup John Irving tout cela).
Ce qui m'a déplu? Le style inégal, parfois si bien ficelé, d'autres fois si artificiels. Quand un personnage explique: "Froissé par son insensibilité, je lui ai répondu...", impossible de ne pas décrocher devant une telle tournure dans la bouche d'un personnage.
Par contre, avec tout ce qui lui arrive, il y avait chez Romain une grande passivité, l'homme subit beaucoup les autres et les événements, de façon énervante pour le lecteur. Et le coup fourré de la fin, over the top comme disent les anglos, impossible d'y croire. Jugement dernier à la sauce télé réalité.
Bref, une lecture qui à peine terminée me laisse perplexe. C'était correct, quoi.
tonstantweader's review against another edition
3.0
Métis Beach is parenthesized by the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, American wars that dramatically affect the life of our protagonist and narrator Romain Carrier, a successful Hollywood screenwriter who has returned to his home in Métis Beach, a village north of Quebec on the mouth of the St. Lawrence River before it opens into the Atlantic Ocean. When Roman was growing up, the French served the English as gardeners, repairmen, cooks, and maids, but were not social or economic equals and the language divide was widened by political and class divisions.
Romain is looking back on his life in preparation for writing his memoir, his defense and hopefully his salvation. In doing so, he centers each section on the people he loved and befriended and how they changed his life. He begins with Gail, an English-speaking young woman whose family enjoyed tremendous wealth and power. Her beauty attracted him and they were friends, despite her father’s disapproval. Gail seduces him one night and her father accuses Romain of rape, sending him fleeing to the United States, certain that he could never prevail against her father’s clout.
He seeks refuge with a summer visitor to Métis Beach, a woman named Dana who becomes the center of the next section of the book. She is a feminist who writes a manifesto that rivals Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. She takes Romain under her wing, providing him with an education and an urbane polish. He also meets Moise, a young man who becomes his life-long friend. Events transpire to send Romain west to California for the next parts of his life, first in San Francisco and then in Hollywood.
In each section, his life is changed and profoundly affected by his friends and the women he loves. In many ways, he is passive, his life lived in the wake of other people. His choices dictated by others. Even his greatest success, his television series satirizing the televangelists whose greed more than overwhelms their faith, he credits to his wife Ann, as much as to himself.
Métis Beach is an interesting and ambitious novel. By ambitious, I mean that the author crams all the culture wars into one book, the issue of Quebecois independence, feminism, civil rights, anti-war movements and patriotism, gay rights, religious hypocrisy, atheism, nationalism, and patriotism. I am sure that is not all. Add the questions of what friendship means, who and what make a family, and how small decisions have profound effects that ripple through decades and it all becomes a very heavy weight for one novel to carry.
As much as I agree with Romain Carrier’s worldview, the story became polemical, particularly at the end. Perhaps because the Iraq War is still ongoing, it is difficult for Bourbonnais to restrain herself, but she had this ambush with a right-wing talk show host that was just over the top. Bush and Cheney’s farrago of lies is still killing people, not only in Iraq, but now in Syria and Yeman and across the Middle East, so it is tempting to make people who supported that war completely and utterly evil, but it was too malicious and unrealistic. In each section of the book, there is someone who is just one-dimensionally awful, Gail’s father, Dana’s son, Ken in San Francisco, and then Melody and Sweeney in the final section, not to mention the murderer.
Nonetheless, the story is interesting. It captures the major divisions and themes of American life, from Vietnam to Reaganism to the culture wars and Iraq though from one perspective. In the end, though, while Romain will never understand his critics, he can step back and value what is most important, friends and family.
Métis Beach will be released on November 22nd. It was was originally released in French and was translated by Jacob Homel. I received an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/metis-beach-by-claudine-bourbonnais/
Romain is looking back on his life in preparation for writing his memoir, his defense and hopefully his salvation. In doing so, he centers each section on the people he loved and befriended and how they changed his life. He begins with Gail, an English-speaking young woman whose family enjoyed tremendous wealth and power. Her beauty attracted him and they were friends, despite her father’s disapproval. Gail seduces him one night and her father accuses Romain of rape, sending him fleeing to the United States, certain that he could never prevail against her father’s clout.
He seeks refuge with a summer visitor to Métis Beach, a woman named Dana who becomes the center of the next section of the book. She is a feminist who writes a manifesto that rivals Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. She takes Romain under her wing, providing him with an education and an urbane polish. He also meets Moise, a young man who becomes his life-long friend. Events transpire to send Romain west to California for the next parts of his life, first in San Francisco and then in Hollywood.
In each section, his life is changed and profoundly affected by his friends and the women he loves. In many ways, he is passive, his life lived in the wake of other people. His choices dictated by others. Even his greatest success, his television series satirizing the televangelists whose greed more than overwhelms their faith, he credits to his wife Ann, as much as to himself.
Métis Beach is an interesting and ambitious novel. By ambitious, I mean that the author crams all the culture wars into one book, the issue of Quebecois independence, feminism, civil rights, anti-war movements and patriotism, gay rights, religious hypocrisy, atheism, nationalism, and patriotism. I am sure that is not all. Add the questions of what friendship means, who and what make a family, and how small decisions have profound effects that ripple through decades and it all becomes a very heavy weight for one novel to carry.
As much as I agree with Romain Carrier’s worldview, the story became polemical, particularly at the end. Perhaps because the Iraq War is still ongoing, it is difficult for Bourbonnais to restrain herself, but she had this ambush with a right-wing talk show host that was just over the top. Bush and Cheney’s farrago of lies is still killing people, not only in Iraq, but now in Syria and Yeman and across the Middle East, so it is tempting to make people who supported that war completely and utterly evil, but it was too malicious and unrealistic. In each section of the book, there is someone who is just one-dimensionally awful, Gail’s father, Dana’s son, Ken in San Francisco, and then Melody and Sweeney in the final section, not to mention the murderer.
Nonetheless, the story is interesting. It captures the major divisions and themes of American life, from Vietnam to Reaganism to the culture wars and Iraq though from one perspective. In the end, though, while Romain will never understand his critics, he can step back and value what is most important, friends and family.
Métis Beach will be released on November 22nd. It was was originally released in French and was translated by Jacob Homel. I received an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley.
https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/metis-beach-by-claudine-bourbonnais/