Prayers of a Very Wise Child

Ronald Conrad is a professor of English at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute in Toronto.

Carrier is said to be the Quebec writer most read in English Canada. His
first novel, La Guerre, Yes Sir!, has long been a staple of CanLit
courses, and no short story is more familiar to schoolchildren than
“The Hockey Sweater,” whether in print or in the National Film
Board’s animated version, The Sweater. In both these works, as well as
almost all his others, Carrier depicts a Quebec of the Duplessis era, of
the “grande noirceur” that makes the Quebeckers of today shudder.

Prayers of a Very Wise Child is no exception. A young boy regularly
visits the village church to ask God about the world He created. Why did
young Ginette slip on the ice and die, while old Ephremette Duclos, at
over 100, is “afraid You’ve forgotten her here on Earth”? Why did
the neighbor hang himself, after the house burned down while his wife
was in bed with the man who makes beer? Then why did the Church refuse
to bury him? Why is the world at war? Why are “bums” never to be
seen? Why did the nun reprimand him for writing on the sidewalk, when
“You wrote Your message in the sky”? “You don’t seem to mind,
God,” he concludes, “that Your Creation is very hard to
understand.”

The young parishioner does offer thanks that the war is elsewhere and
that he finally saw a pair of “titties,” but questions
predominate—and through them a harsh portrayal of the clergy, the
patriarchal power structure, and provincial politics (when the Premier
gives a local friend a cigar, the man hangs it on the wall above the
crucifix).

In the original French, entitled Priиres d’un enfant trиs, trиs
sage (“Prayers of a Very, Very Good Child”), this small book is more
aptly represented by the title that translator Fischman chose to give
it. Perhaps the nameless young boy is “good,” but in the very
questions he asks about this mystifying world, he shows himself already
to be wise.