Marie-Claire Blais (1939- )

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A Season in the Life of Emmanuel by Marie-Claire Blais, Derek Coltman (Translator), Nicole Brossard (Afterword)

This is one of the darkest tales I've ever read--a sort of "Angela's Ashes" times ten. It is chilling to think that, although this is fiction, people really lived this way, in such a dark world cut off from most all human emotions, in poverty so brutal even Charles Dickens could not have imagined it. Yet in the middle of all of this blossoms Jean Le Maigre, a sort of John Keats destined to be cut down by tuberculosis in his prime. A large portion of the book is Jean Le Maigre's biography, but it is also filled with other rich characters -- tough Grand-Mère, mystical Héloïse, and delightfully wicked Le Septième.

I have read this book in both its original French and Derek Coltman's translation. The translation is quite good in keeping the flavor of the original French, although at times there are words chosen in English which are stronger than they were in French. -- Amy Keene

Marie-Claire Blais (1939- )

From Encarta

Excerpt:

French-Canadian writer. Her first published novel, La belle bête (1959; Mad Shadows, 1960), which received mixed reviews, is not as much about her native Québec Province as about a family inhabiting a somber landscape shut off from other people and from love. An author of plays and poetry, Blais used dramatic and poetic techniques in the novella Le jour est noir (1962; The Day Is Dark,1967)...

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From the Canadian Theater Encyclopedia

Excerpt:

At 20 years old she published her first novel, La Belle Bête, whose theme, hatred, would set the tone for many of her works to follow. She received a Guggenheim Foundation grant and went to the US to write. The book she produced there, Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel would win her the Médicis award in 1965. Her novels, over 20 of them, have been published in several languages. She has won two Governor General's Awards. In 1993 she was inducted into the Royal Academy of Language and Literature of Belgium and in 1994 into the Académie des lettres du Québec...

Companions of the Order of Canada Gallery:  Marie-Claire Blais

Includes Photograph

Nommée en 1972 pour son apport manifeste à la littérature canadienne en tant qu'auteure de

La Belle Bête, roman qui a été traduit en anglais sous le titre de Mad Shadows.

Appointed in 1972 for her contribution to Canadian literature as writer of novels such as

La Belle Bête, translated into English as Mad Shadows.

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