Critique de Noirceur et autres couleurs

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Une critique qui m'avait échappé du recueil de nouvelles Noirceur et autres couleurs. Parue dans The Gazette  du 15 janvier dernier.

NOIRCEUR ET AUTRES COULEURS
By Mireille Gagne
Editions trampoline, 96 pages, $11.95
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All of the stories in Quebec city writer Mireille Gagne's new story collection, Noirceur et autres couleurs, are dark and troubling. But Gagne's prose is so lush, her themes so profound, that reading her stories is at once uncomfortable, refreshing and intense, like walking in a summer rainstorm.

The collection is aimed at mature teens and young adults, and explores some fairly dark territory, including incest, suicide, divorce and death. But the characters in these stories all seem to find some lifeline, some glimmer of human integrity or hope to pull them away from the darkness and into the other colours referred to in the title.

In La Peche aux renards, for example, an old man wakes up in a hospital with no memory. A little boy he doesn't recognize is holding his hand. The boy explains that he is Tom, the man's grandson. For days, the boy recounts stories of wonderful times the two have shared, slowly filling the man's blank mind with happy memories. One day, the old man realizes that this is not his grandson, that these are not his memories, and that the boy's real grandfather has recently died.
"Why are you crying Papi?" asks the boy.
"I know you are not my little Tom." The boy's eyes fill with tears. "And
you are not my Papi." But instead of asking the boy about his real grandfather, the old man simply takes the child's hand. The two carry on where they left off, discussing fictional memories, both happy to suspend disbelief.
"Do you remember the time we went fishing for foxes?"
"Yes, it had rained so much that the foxes had to learn to swim."

The reader too must suspend disbelief, and face some of life's ugly truths, to appreciate Gagne's stories, but the payoff is immense.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

 

Un très court extrait en français de La pêche au renard. Comme le dit l'auteure de la critique, dans cette nouvelle, un vieil homme se réveille à l'hôpital, sans mémoire. Un petit garçon qu'il ne reconnait pas lui tient la main. Le petit garçon explique au vieil homme qu'ils s'appelle Tom et qu'il est son petit-fils.

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Et pendant que Thomas parle et parle encore, je laisse ses mots comme des milliers de marteaux-piqueurs percer des trous dans ma tête pour en faire jaillir des éclairs de soleil et de couleurs.

- Tu te souviens, Papi, la fois où on a dit à papa et maman qu'on allait au parc, mais on est allés acheter un petit chien?

- Non, je ne m'en souviens pas. Raconte.

Alors, Thomas continue. Il dessine avec ses mots dans ma tête. Dessine sur une page blanche. Ses paroles sont des crayons multicolores, multisenteurs, multibruits. Par fragments, il m'invente une vie.

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