Today a short review for a short work.
Our cover flap advises that this work is “A quietly
affecting modern fairy tale”, so what is a fairy tale? If you browse numerous
online dictionaries you’ll come across words such as elves, fairies, giants,
hobgoblins, dragons or folkloric fantasy characters. Or maybe “A fictitious,
highly fanciful story”. Well I can categorically state the latest work I have
read by Jacques Poulin, has no elves, fairies, giants, hobgoblins or dragons.
However it does contain cats, isolation, and psychologically scarred
individuals, just like “Mr Blue” and “Spring Tides” which I have previously reviewed here. This work is slightly different though,
this time we have a “witch”.
Our small work opens with our female narrator explaining her
story, she is single, finding it hard to love and is a translator. She is
currently working on translating a French book into English for Monsieur
Waterman:
Usually I don’t have much
confidence in men, but for him I made an exception. Despite being twice my age
he was my best friend though we hadn’t known each other very long. He’s a
writer and he’d started a new novel.
As for me, I’d started to
translate one of his novels, the one that talks about the Oregon Trail. If
there was a way to get close to someone in this life – of which I was not
certain – it might be through translation.
Our protagonist, Marine, and Monsieur Waterman come across a
stray cat, with a collar and a phone number, however although she rings the
phone number she decides not to leave a message. Later she discovers a hidden
message in the collar “My name is Famine, I am on the road because my mistress
can no longer take care of me, or of herself…”
This opens up a mystery, how to locate the owner as our heroes
are concerned for her wellbeing. Knowing the phone number of the owner, that a “witch”
dumped the cat outside of the property where Marine is living, and with the
help of a private detective they go on a mission to “save” the young girl (with
scars on her wrists) from the “witch”.
We translators have a strange
job. Don’t think that all we have to do is find the words and phrases that best
correspond with the source text. We have to go further, pour ourselves into the
other person’s writing the way a cat curls up in a basket. We must embrace the author’s style.
Yes, this is so much more than a simple tale of two people
attempting to find a cat’s owner and rescue her. This is a work which
celebrates language and languages, it revels in the art of translation, it
embraces rhythm, pace and meter.
Another sign that I was zouave: on my way back up to the chalet
I started talking to the birch trees. There were a dozen of them along the
path. They weren’t in very good shape, they were huddled against one another:
it was as if they needed to defend themselves against the invasion of maple and
ash trees. Their roots were growing just above the surface of the earth and
they were barely clinging to the rocky cliff. They had a hard life and I
explained to them that my life was getting complicated too, that I was losing
my independence and that I was feeling vulnerable, like them.
The themes from Poulin’s other works are to the fore here as
well, isolated lives becoming complicated by outsiders, the season passing,
cats, tennis(?), writers struggling with their art, vulnerable people including
attempted or even successful suicide, broken relationships, the impossibility
of a true love. But ultimately a wonderfully written piece, language coming to
the fore and the celebration of telling stories, joy in nature and our
surroundings.
Jacques Poulin’s works may be simply told but they are a
simple celebration of life itself. Sit back, look around you, how amazing it
all is, if only I could find the right word to describe it…..better get out my
dictionary.
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