Romans from here: Really friends for life

What a beautiful novel of friendship, which explores both its strength and its contradictions, against a backdrop of overwhelming news!.

Romans from here: Really friends for life

What a beautiful novel of friendship, which explores both its strength and its contradictions, against a backdrop of overwhelming news!

All of Nathalie Babin-Gagnon's novels are marked by violence, but she has such a way of telling that it's the sweetness that we remember. His fifth book, The Choices of Mary, proves it again.

It is about two friends, Lauréanne and Marie, who became accomplices during their difficult adolescence in Val-d'Or. They are suffocating there and have only one desire: to leave. Patiently, they collect their money and, as soon as their 5th grade is completed, they take the road to Montreal.

Farewell to Abitibi, to them the realization of their ambitions!

In fact, it is Marie, strong and disciplined, who leads the duo. She has decided: Lauréanne will become a lawyer and herself will be a doctor.

But now, she succumbs to the bewitching charm of Yacoub, a young Algerian who is also studying medicine. She becomes pregnant at the very moment when the handsome boy, who flutters about, drops her without qualms.

Change of direction

However, ignoring her heartbreak, ignoring her professional aspirations, Marie decides to keep the child. She will not be a doctor, but a mother.

Lauréanne is flabbergasted and her incomprehension gives an interesting tone to this novel of which she is the narrator. As she has an unwavering attachment to Marie, she stays by her side while judging her choices, but in petto: there is no question of breaking the bond that unites them.

Thus, as the two women are neighbours, Lauréanne is saddened to see little Loutfia manipulate her mother, blinded by the child. It is true, however, that the little girl is endearing, intelligent and of an implacable will, which asserts itself as it ages.

As a teenager, Loutfia is interested in the origins of her father and the great turmoil that has shaken the Muslim world since the attacks of September 11, 2001. And it is she who, in turn, will flee the quiet life that awaits her.

With all the impetuosity of youth, she travels to the borders of Turkey and Syria to treat the victims of the Islamic State. Her mother is so shaken that Lauréanne becomes the strong woman of the duo, especially when things go wrong for Loutfia.

Despite some lengths at the beginning and end of the book, this statement hooks us. But there are two additional elements that distinguish this novel.

Nathalie Babin-Gagnon is a journalist, and it is with great relevance that she integrates social and political news into her story: Maple Spring, the attacks in France, the election of Donald Trump, even the negotiation of collective agreements. ! His characters belong to a society and a moment in history, and are influenced by it – happy way of telling!

In addition, she knows how to make plausible the contradictory feelings of Lauréanne with regard to Marie. It's not mean or hypocritical, just deeply human.

And there is the sweetness of the author: in her way of making people feel worry and anger, then putting them down rather than ruining everything.

NEXT NEWS