Nadia Comaneci’s gold-medal performance at the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976 is the starting point for a whole new generation. Éric Dupont watches the performance on TV, mesmerized. The son of a police officer (Henry VIII) and a professional cook—as he likes to remind us—he grows up in the depths of the Quebec countryside with a new address for almost every birthday and little but memories of his mother to hang on to. His parents have divorced, and the novel’s narrator relates his childhood, comparing it to a family gymnastics performance worthy of Nadia herself. Life in the Court of Matane is unforgiving and we explore different facets of it (dreams of sovereignty, schoolyard bullying, imagined missions to Russia, poems by Baudelaire), each based around an encounter with a different animal, until the narrator befriends a great horned owl, summons up the courage to let go of the upper bar forever, and makes his glorious escape.
Author
Eric Dupont est né à Amqui (Gaspésie) en 1970. Il est l'auteur de Voleurs de sucre (2004), La Logeuse (2006), Bestiaire (2007) et La Fiancée américaine (2012). Il enseigne la traduction à l'Université McGill. // Eric Dupont is an author, teacher and translator who lives in Montreal. His French-language novel La Logeuse won the Combat des livres. He was a finalist for both the Prix littéraire France-Québec and the Prix des cinq continents. He was the winner of the Prix littéraire des collégiens and the Prix des libraires. His fourth novel, The American Fiancée, published in Canada as Songs for the Cold of Heart by QC Fiction, was on the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist and was a finalist for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for translation. (Photo credit: Justine Latour.)
