Claudine Bourbonnais

If you wrote your autobiography, what would be in it? Would it be a sweeping epic or a mundane recitation of boring sameness? Mine would definitely be the latter. I'm not famous, have never run afoul of the law (well, aside from a speeding ticket or two), haven't been involved in historically significant events, and usually have a pretty cordial relationship with family and friends. The same cannot be said of the main character in Claudine Bourbonnais' epic novel, Métis Beach. His life makes for a catalogue of the changing mores and attitudes of second half of the twentieth century in this expansive novel.

In his fifties, Roman Carr is the writer and creator of the famous satirical show called In Gad We Trust. It is designed to entertain and offend in equal measure and although the show is a hit, Roman has been able to fly mostly under the radar, at least until the story opens. Telling his own story, Roman goes back in time to his life in Métis Beach on the Gaspé Peninsula, a town he fled as a teenager many years before. Born Romain Carrier, he and his father worked as caretakers for the English Canadians who had large summer homes in the area until one evening when everything went wrong for the young man. He flees the judgment of his father and the English community, ending up in New York City for several years before a terrible tragedy sends him out to San Francisco and then Hollywood. Along the way, he meets his best friend, has an affair, learns about feminism, protests Vietnam, and embraces humanism. His experiences lead him to develop his TV show, exposing the sordidness, greed, and hypocrisy of organized religion and present it as a microcosm of America. As protests against his show grow, a surprise from his past shakes his firm belief on certain social rights, tempering his stances and making things far less black and white. And then the strident patriotism of the immediate aftermath of 9/11 happens, throwing his life and relationships into even greater turmoil.

The novel is epic in scope, taking on an absolute litany of issues: feminism, protest, freedom of speech, religion, radical evangelicalism, abortion, class, capital punishment, the draft, mental health, greed, and patriotism. It's simply too much. And while Roman did and saw many things in his life, he is rarely the driver of his own life. He is buffeted around by the multiple women who loved him, the one who hated him, and the people in his life who found him to be an easy mark to manipulate. He had to endure narrow minds at almost every turn although the characters who saved him are generous and giving. Roman narrates his own story, sharing each piece of his life, looking back at the pieces as distinct sections relating to a certain person or people in his life rather than the significant events of the time. For all the issues and historical events contained here, in the end, this is a story of people, of the family you make and the friends you love. By the end of the novel, I was fatigued by Roman's life when I think I was meant to be sympathetic to this astute observer of society and the litany of tragedies in his life. This is not a bad novel, far from it, but it erred on the side of everything but the kitchen sink in the making of its point. If you're a fan of epic novels, you may feel differently than I do.… (mehr)

Métis Beach is parenthesized by the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, American wars that dramatically affect the life of our protagonist and narrator Romain Carrier, a successful Hollywood screenwriter who has returned to his home in Métis Beach, a village north of Quebec on the mouth of the St. Lawrence River before it opens into the Atlantic Ocean. When Roman was growing up, the French served the English as gardeners, repairmen, cooks, and maids, but were not social or economic equals and the language divide was widened by political and class divisions.

Romain is looking back on his life in preparation for writing his memoir, his defense and hopefully his salvation. In doing so, he centers each section on the people he loved and befriended and how they changed his life. He begins with Gail, an English-speaking young woman whose family enjoyed tremendous wealth and power. Her beauty attracted him and they were friends, despite her father’s disapproval. Gail seduces him one night and her father accuses Romain of rape, sending him fleeing to the United States, certain that he could never prevail against her father’s clout.

He seeks refuge with a summer visitor to Métis Beach, a woman named Dana who becomes the center of the next section of the book. She is a feminist who writes a manifesto that rivals Friedan’s Feminine Mystique. She takes Romain under her wing, providing him with an education and an urbane polish. He also meets Moise, a young man who becomes his life-long friend. Events transpire to send Romain west to California for the next parts of his life, first in San Francisco and then in Hollywood.

In each section, his life is changed and profoundly affected by his friends and the women he loves. In many ways, he is passive, his life lived in the wake of other people. His choices dictated by others. Even his greatest success, his television series satirizing the televangelists whose greed more than overwhelms their faith, he credits to his wife Ann, as much as to himself.

Métis Beach is an interesting and ambitious novel. By ambitious, I mean that the author crams all the culture wars into one book, the issue of Quebecois independence, feminism, civil rights, anti-war movements and patriotism, gay rights, religious hypocrisy, atheism, nationalism, and patriotism. I am sure that is not all. Add the questions of what friendship means, who and what make a family, and how small decisions have profound effects that ripple through decades and it all becomes a very heavy weight for one novel to carry.

As much as I agree with Romain Carrier’s worldview, the story became polemical, particularly at the end. Perhaps because the Iraq War is still ongoing, it is difficult for Bourbonnais to restrain herself, but she had this ambush with a right-wing talk show host that was just over the top. Bush and Cheney’s farrago of lies is still killing people, not only in Iraq, but now in Syria and Yeman and across the Middle East, so it is tempting to make people who supported that war completely and utterly evil, but it was too malicious and unrealistic. In each section of the book, there is someone who is just one-dimensionally awful, Gail’s father, Dana’s son, Ken in San Francisco, and then Melody and Sweeney in the final section, not to mention the murderer.

Nonetheless, the story is interesting. It captures the major divisions and themes of American life, from Vietnam to Reaganism to the culture wars and Iraq though from one perspective. In the end, though, while Romain will never understand his critics, he can step back and value what is most important, friends and family.

Métis Beach will be released on November 22nd. It was was originally released in French and was translated by Jacob Homel. I received an advance copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/metis-beach-by-claudine-b...… (mehr)