Memoria

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Novels often tell the sad stories of love’s failure: one person is
abandoned by another and after much despair and hopelessness seems to
overcome the past in order to build a new life. Such stories are
predictable to the point of being almost boring. Memoria is different.
It does tell of abandonment, grief, and eventual healing, but it does
not stop there. Emma, the novel’s protagonist and narrator, does not
melodramatically weep over her loss. Rather, she delves into the
infinite reservoir of memory. She heals, but she does not forget.

Memoria is a tale told with gentleness and without anger. Emma
recognizes that everything in life is precious. For Dupré, remembrance,
or the surge of emotion released by remembrance, is the essence of love
and life. Such moments occur when time suddenly stops on the image of a
significant gesture. They are certainly provoked by sensual perceptions,
as Baudelaire already told us in his poem “Correspondences.”
Baudelaire and Proust are part of the loom on which Dupré weaves her
novel.

Dupré has published eight collections of poetry and was twice
nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. La Memoria won
several literary prizes and was translated into English by Liedevy
Hawke, a distinguished and award-winning translator. Dupré and Hawke
have produced a work of art remarkable for its lyrical lucidity,
discreet emotion, and gentle precision.