Still Lives

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

This novel by Quebec writer Pierre Nepveu, winner of the Governor
General’s Award, Quebec’s Prix Victor-Barbeau, and the Prix France
Canada, centres on the character of Jerome Roy, a Montreal newspaper
photographer who falls in love with Arlette Segala, a hostess at Expo
67’s French pavilion. They have a daughter, Lea, and live in a
Cфte-des-Neiges apartment until 1970, when she leaves him, taking their
daughter to France. After a futile search for them in his wife’s
hometown, Jerome resigns himself to a banal existence as a portrait
photographer.

Although the plot is simple, its execution is not. It is advanced
through such secondary characters as Marc Melville, the disturbed
student who lives upstairs from Jerome, and Jerome’s friend Jeanne
Beaugrand, a crisis hotline counselor. Even casual readers may be able
to guess that Nepveu is also a poet. At times, his lyrical and
descriptive style clogs the narrative with excessive detail.

Nepveu displays a perceptive appreciation of past events, important and
trivial. He refers to Charles De Gaulle as “the great President [who]
set foot on this earth like the Messiah, and then departed, leaving only
the sovereign echo of his voice behind.” He is also aware that
seagulls have not always gathered inland. It is through such awareness
that this author demonstrates his craftsmanship.