Am I Disturbing You?

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.

The late Anne Hébert was the author of nine novels, six poetry
collections, and three plays; a three-time winner of the Governor
General’s Award and the recipient of France’s Prix Fémina; and a
companion of the Order of Canada.

Am I Disturbing You? is the English translation of a novel first
published in 1998 under the title Est-ce que je te dérange? It tells
the story of a young Québécoise in Paris who dies of a burst aneurysm
in the novel’s opening line. “Delphine died in my bed last night,”
says the young man in whose apartment she has stayed for a few months,
and to whom she was nothing, except maybe a strange disturbance, “like
a stray cat that twines itself around your legs, that you refuse to look
at, for fear you’ll have to take it in.” Slowly Delphine’s story
unfolds. She suffered an imaginary pregnancy, lived as an anorexic
street kid, and spent her entire life looking for love and
understanding.

After her death, the young man cannot forget her, because—he comes to
realize—of the frozen tears of his own childhood. The reader imagines
that his chance encounter with Delphine will inspire the young man to
reassess his own life.

Sheila Fischman provides a fine translation of this eerie, poetic novel
whose most persistent theme is that nothing in life stands on solid
ground.