Your cart is currently empty!
The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant
It is the glorious second day of May, 1942. The sun is drawing the damp from earth still heavy with the end of a long Quebec winter, the budding branches of the trees along rue Fabre and in Parc Lafontaine of the Plateau Mont Royal ache to release their leaves into the warm, clear air heralding the approach of summer.
Seven women in this raucous Francophone working-class Montreal neighbourhood are pregnant—only one of them, “the fat woman,” is bearing a child of true love and affection. Next door to the home that is by times refuge, asylum, circus-arena, confessional and battleground to her extended family, with ancient roots in both rural Quebec and the primordial land of the Saskatchewan Cree, stands an immaculately kept but seemingly empty house where the fates, Rose, Mauve, Violet and their mother Florence, only ever fleetingly and uncertainly glimpsed by those in a state of emotional extremis, are knitting the booties of what will become the children of a whole new nation.
In this first of six novels that became his Chronicles of the Plateau Mont Royal, Tremblay allows his imagination free reign, fictionalizing the lives of his beloved characters, dramatized so brilliantly in his plays and remembered so poignantly in his memoirs.“The fat woman” both is and is not Michel Tremblay’s mother—her extended family and neighbours more than a symbol of a colonized people: abandoned and mocked by France; conquered and exploited by England; abused and terrorized by the Church; and forced into a war by Canada supporting the very powers that have crushed their spirit and twisted their souls since time immemorial. This is a “divine comedy” of the extraordinary triumphs and tragedies of ordinary people caught up by circumstances that span the range of the ridiculous to the sublime.
“The language of The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant—it’s properly heard as a novel of voices—creates a neighbourhood tuned to the harmonies of pregnancy, to the awe of life about to be lived. There are some lovely, moving scenes. Tremblay is nothing if not eloquent, and he’s found a deft poetry to speak his tribute here.” — Books in Canada
“At the end of Tremblay’s career one will likely be able to sew together all his plays and novels and discover that we have been privileged to read the works of a veritable Québécois Marcel Proust.”
— Canadian Book Review Annual
“A loving celebration of fertility and hope … Fischman has faithfully retained the tenderness and tone of the original … ”— Canadian Literature
“One of the top ten works of fiction of the century.”
— Montreal Gazette
Details
Dimensions:
256 Pages
8.5in * 216mm * 5.5in * 140mm * 0.75in19mm
393gr
13.875oz
Published:
January 01, 1981
City of Publication:
Vancouver
Country of Publication:
CA
Publisher:
ISBN:
9780889221901
9781772010756 – Kindle
9781772011692 – PDF
9781772010244 – EPUB
9781772010763 – PDF
9781772010749 – EPUB
9781772010800 – EPUB
9781772010930 – Kindle
9780889228009 – EPUB
9781772010824 – PDF
9781772011104 – PDF
9781772010121 – EPUB
9781772011678 – EPUB
9781772011098 – Kindle
9781772012958 – EPUB
9780889228948 – EPUB
9780889228436 – EPUB
9781772010947 – PDF
9780889229624 – EPUB
9781772011081 – EPUB
9780889229679 – EPUB
9781772011654 – EPUB
9780889228092 – EPUB
9780889227309 – EPUB
9781772011685 – Kindle
9781772010817 – Kindle
9780889228207 – EPUB
9780889228320 – EPUB
9780889229945 – EPUB
9781772010923 – Kindle
Featured In:
Language:
eng
Share
No author posts found.
