Reading Nijinsky

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 narrator of this thought-provoking and moving novel is a translator
of paperback romances who travels to a Spanish village by the sea and
sets about translating the autobiography of a serial killer. Confronted
with the memories of a torturer and murderer, the narrator seeks to
understand why there is violence, why people read the Marquis de Sade,
watch horror movies, indulge in weird practices, and so forth. An
excerpt from Nijinsky’s Diary prefaces each chapter; he, too, was
preoccupied with death, crime, and violence.

Rioux, a writer and translator who divides her time between Quebec and
Spain, has her narrator comment on the sea and particularly its moments
of blissful serenity. Yet, the narrator also speculates that the water
is salty because it contains all the tears shed since creation—that
its incessant movement is caused by “all the sobs of the world.” In
the end, the narrator’s acknowledgment of life’s frequent beauty is
counterbalanced by her awareness that even if she “were to translate
all the romance novels in the world, killers would still come to write
their stories with the blood of children.” Read this book; it contains
much food for thought.