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MONTREAL REVIEW OF BOOKS
Three issues in 2015
March: New Spring Titles
July: The Art of Living Edition
November: Fall Releases
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By Kai Chen
g Thom
mRb
FREE /ISSU E
44
4
SUM MER 201
MONTREAL
T
he protagonist of Heather O’Neill’s
long-awaited second novel, The Girl
Who Was Saturday Night, is nineteenyear-old Nouschka Tremblay: intelligent
but directionless, poor despite her
celebrity, and stuck in the well-worn rut of her
relationship with her deadbeat twin brother,
Nicolas. She dropped out of high school in
response to Nicolas’s cajoling, and the two
roommates, best friends, and partners in crime
have been drifting hedonistically ever since.
But something is shifting in Nouschka. The
easy-way-out choices of their adolescence
(rhetoric over critical thought, petty theft over
a minimum- wage job), which continue to suit
Nicolas, don’t satisfy her anymore. When we
meet her in 1994, on the threshold of her
twentieth birthday, Nouschka is struggling
between the pull of attempting to make something of herself and the inertia of her squalid
and promiscuous existence on boulevard SaintLaurent. “I was trying my best to straighten out
my life,” she tells us, “but I always ended up in
the middle of some festive waste of time.”
BOOKS
REVIEW OF
The intimacy of the siblings’ relationship is understandable: they have had only one another to rely
on all their lives. Their mother abandoned them in
infancy and their absentee father, the has-been FrenchCanadian folk singer Étienne Tremblay, shows up only
when he wants to use them as props in his pursuit
of publicity. The elderly grandfather who raised them,
Loulou, though sweet and kind, cannot relate to
the twins.
What alternative does she have to her current life
with Nicolas? Nouschka isn’t sure. Against the backdrop of the 1995 referendum, Nouschka must weigh
her own “Oui” vs. “Non” options.
Writing from the perspective of a “pure laine”
Québécois character is politically charged, particularly
when the character is as cutting a social critic as
Nouschka. In the first few pages of the book,
Nouschka describes the legacy of les filles du roi who
reluctantly helped colonize New France: “They were
pregnant before they even had a chance to unpack
their bags. They didn’t want this. They didn’t want
to populate this horrible land … They spoke to their
children through gritted teeth. That’s where the
Quebec accent came from. The nation crawled out
from between their legs.” Later, Nouschka explains
her father’s popularity thus: “Quebec needed stars
badly. The more they had, the better argument they
had for having their own culture and separating
from Canada.”
O’Neill was unfazed by the politics of an Anglophone writer adopting the voice of a Francophone.
“I didn’t really consciously think about it,” she says.
“It just happened and I really enjoyed it and by the
time I thought about possible ramifications, it was all
too late: the Tremblays were already alive and well
and living in Montreal and they wouldn’t let me go
until I’d told their tale.”
O’Neill’s
Little
Criminals
ries and
explores bounda
SECE SSIO N/IN
ERÍN MOU RE’S
SECE SSIO N
NTH AL’S
| ANN A LEVE
the
mile end
caf é
“So here it is. My
friends call me
he, or they. The
most of my fami
government and
ly call me she.
The media calls
I don’t trust them
me she, because
enough to requ
est that they do
My lovers call
anything else.
me sweetheart.
Or baby. Somewhe
I find myself. Thes
re
in all of that,
e are, after all, only
words.”
Ivan
E. Coyote, Gend
er Failure
Saturday Night Fever
BY SARAH LOLLEY
P H O T O B Y T E R E N CE
Though I have
never had the pleasure
mally meeting
of forGender
and Ivan E. Coyote, Failure authors Rae Spoon
as warm and achinglytheir voices and stories feel
familiar to me
of my own family
members. We shareas those
kinship, in the
a certain
sense
genderqueer individuthat transgender and
als in North
bound together
by experiences America are
of gendered violence
of marginality,
,
of
living
and dying at odds
with the categorie
s “male” or “female”
on us at birth.
imposed
For
to say, those who the luckiest among us – that
is
ences also grant survive – these shared experius
of chosen family: a community in exile, a kind
dysfunctional to bittersweet, fractious, and often
be
At our worst, we sure, but family nonetheless.
fighting for scraps are at each other’s throats,
table of the “LGBTof freedom tossed from the
best, we live, love, rights” movement. At our
and mourn as
one.
Based on a live
mance show that storytelling and musical perforSpoon and Coyote
across North America
toured
is a tender evocatio and Europe, Gender Failure
munities at their n of the trans and queer comtween. Made up best, worst, and everything beof
lyrics, and photogra letters, personal essays, song
between its co-authophs, the book is a promise
rs. Coyote writes:
I vowed to write
“Rae and
[a
light on our true work] that would shine a
together to be trans selves … to create a space
brave inside of,
and we made a
promise to place
To most readers
vidual truths on our deeply personal and indithe
communities, the outside the queer and trans
Spoon and Coyotedashboard as our compass.”
doubt its nuanced novelty of Gender Failure is no
They explore with live up to this promise.
yet accessible glimpse
gentle
complexities –
humour
poignancy such
into the
and
occasionally hilarious
intimate topics
harrowing – of
and often
sexuality and gender
as burgeoning
life in the margin
dysphoria in
norms. To those
of gender
experiences in
of
mental health care, childhood,
Spoon and Coyote us inside these communities,
(and coming out
coming out
elders of, a growing stand tall as part of, as
rooms, and top again), gender normative washlegacy of queer
surgery. Spoon,
trans artists and
a noted singersongwriter and
writers; the stories and
composer, complem
offer
they
are
anything
author and storytelle
ents
r Coyote’s trademar veteran
count of strugglin but novel. Spoon’s actongue-in-cheek
k
choosing between g with body dysphoria,
as soulfully earnestwisdom with a literary voice
hormone replacem
as their acclaime
therapy and preservin
ent
Both authors’ backgrou
d folk
Bthrough
YRNES
voice, and ultimatel g their singing
nds as entertain songs.
ers shine
in Gender
y “retiring” from
gender binary,
the
tentious and easy Failure; their prose is unpreis at
narrative and the once a unique personal
the kitchen table, to read. These are stories from
ney that all trans ongoing, exhausting jourdive bars, from from truck stops and basemen
long road trips
t
coming to terms individuals undertake in
and battered
rocking chairs.
tionship between with the complex relaization. Coyote’s identity, body, and socialdescription of
undergoing
a psychiatr ic evaluatio
n in order to qualify
top surgery is a
for
heartbreakingly
commentary on
funny
the medical establishmsatirical
violently inept
ent’s
approach to trans
care. Gender Failure
people’s health
and necessary vision:thus offers the reader a rare
a reflection of
ized through our
own, rather than the marginalstream’s, eyes.
the mainIt would be a mistake,
however, to construe
Spoon and Coyote’s
reflection of
lives as wholly
representative of transgender
munity. Indeed,
the
the authors themselvtrans comclear, remindin
g readers that their es make this
ences are just that:
lived experiof white, trans-ma the limited, real experiences
sculine individu
this Asian, transwom
als. Still, for
an
reviewer
out of some thirty-od
, the fact that
d stories about
trans people, only
queer and
two
promine
ntly
transwoman –
feature a
and none feature
of colour – is worthy
trans people
of mention. The
acknowledge this
authors
transwomen of lacuna and the fact that
colour,
and queer commun within the broader trans
a state of emergen ity, inhabit what amounts to
barriers to social cy in terms of violence and
this eases only services and public health; yet
a little the bitterswe
evokes. But then,
et reality it
and community, this is the nature of family
much like Gender
flawed, bitterswe
Failure
itself:
et, and beautiful
throughout.
mRb
Kai Cheng Thom
is a queer writer
and spoken word
in Montreal. Their
artist
writing has appeared
tions, including
in several publicaditch, and, most
recently, Matrix
Magazine.
GENDER FAILURE
Rae Spoon and
Ivan E. Coyote
Arsenal Pulp
Press
$17.95, paper,
256pp
9781551525365
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3 ISSUES IN 2015: MARCH, JULY, NOVEMBER
as
The Girl WhoghWt
Saturday Ni separation
INSIDE
Retiring from
Gender
We wish to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, SODEC, and Conseil des arts de
Montréal for their generous support, without which this publication would not exist.
ICTI ON
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