Stephen Le Herault

Les Harding is author of The Voyages of Lesser Men: Thumbnail Sketches
in Canadian Exploration.

The cover notes to Steven le Hérault call it “a powerful novel that is at once a romance and a picaresque adventure story.” I cannot agree. I found the book vile, unpleasant in the extreme, confusing, and ultimately pointless.

Steven and Gabriella Beauchemin, siblings and incestuous lovers, return to Quebec after a self-imposed 15-year exile in Paris and Dublin. They find Pa a depressed loonie who stuffs dead birds, Ma who cries a lot, and Uncle Phil an unemployed lush who quietly guzzles Molson’s in the basement. But the real star of the show is brother Abel, an insane writer who likes to dress up like a lady, mumble things about James Joyce, and sodomize his coke-sniffing stripper girlfriend. Just a typical family you say. Let’s hope not. As near as I can make out, we are meant to take this degraded and debauched clan as a metaphor for Quebec in the 80s. By the way, Stephen is called Le Hérault or the herald. That must mean something too.

Victor-Levy Beaulieu has written some thirty books. This one is the sixth in a projected twelve-volume series to deal with the Beauchemin family. I’m told that the seventh installment is well underway. Oh joy!