Juliette

Ronald Conrad is a professor of English at Ryerson University in
Toronto.

Yves Beauchemin’s 1981 novel, Le Matou (later translated as The Alley
Cat), took Quebec and France by storm, was carried around by René
Lévesque, became a popular television series, and appeared in 15
languages.

When in 1989 Juliette Pomerleau (and in 1993 its translation, Juliette)
followed, comparisons were inevitable. Both novels are of that class
described by Henry James as “loose, baggy monsters,” with plots and
characters that some called Dickensian, and tastes that others called
Rabelaisian. Both novels have heroes and heroines we are called upon to
love, both have villains we are meant to hate, and both involve quests.
In the latter novel, the enormously fat Juliette recovers from her
deathbed to fulfil a vow: to find her missing niece and restore her to
her child.

Yet what has happened since 1981? Is an enormous plot now just a bore?
Is it no longer enough to love some characters and hate others? Do
incidental themes like the demolition of old Montreal and the healing
power of music now just seem essays tossed in with the plot? Why did I
keep looking at my watch as I tried to get through the 714 pages of this
translation, though it was done by Sheila Fischman and was exquisitely
printed and bound? And, here and there where the language did become
compressed, the imagery dense, the prose clearly worked and reworked,
why did I dare to think that the whole thing might have been done this
way?