La photo de famille by Marcel Moussette (review)

is up for her sexual favors, and sometimes is not. An ardent defender of Belgian actress Annie Cordy, answering only to herself and the voice of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Cornemuse justifies her acts as providing a service to deserving others, and has no qualms about offing anyone she believes is a nuisance to society. She contributes her passion for surfing dating sites and her gift for interpreting signs in her knitting to solving the police case. Slang, Belgicisms, dark humor and sarcasm create a narration in which collective mythology and contemporary cultural allusions combine to form a fantasy world both dark and comic. Van Damme quotes, from the book Parlez-vous le Jean-Claude?, overlap with references to Magritte paintings amid rapid-fire puns and allusions to contemporary art, music, and literature. Against such a bizarre backdrop, the murder mystery itself disappoints a bit and lacks interest. But the mythology of Pandora draws the reader in. Its wooded areas, named after tarot cards, are populated with mysterious beings. Houses hide mobiles made of dentures , clocks have their numbers in reverse, vinyl dolls are canopic jars filled with the viscera of dead pets. The mayor who will not allow anyone to see his face speaks only in riddles. Silent assassins wearing bowlers wander the streets at night in search of forgiveness through wish-fulfillment. In this chaotic world, Perrault’s and Andersen’s fairy-tale lessons are reaffirmed: curiosity is dangerous and desire leads to violence. This book may not be a great work of literature in the classic sense, but those who are nostalgic for childhood tales and like the bite and cynicism of an adult outlook will enjoy reading La petite fêlée aux allumettes. Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania Nathalie G. Cornelius MOUSSETTE, MARCEL. La photo de famille. Montréal: Lévesque, 2012. ISBN 978-2923844 -88-6. Pp. 195. $25 Can. This historical novel is based on clever devices (a 1912 photo, a family tree which identifies sixteen of the twenty-two people on the photo, and a bibliography) that define it as authentic testimony of North American Indians and white families as they intermarry and try to preserve their culture when faced with bigotry. A handful of these people become the main subject of at least one of the twenty-five chapters, not in chronological order, covering the years between 1946 and 2010. The author, Marcel, narrates six chapters, bracketing the novel. He provides a context for the photo, how it came to him on the death of his mother, and its importance in the family history. In order to form a comprehensive view of the narrative, the reader should pay attention to vital information at the start of each chapter: the name of the character (because the first person is consistently used), the location (which could be Quebec, Montreal, Taunton, MA, etc.), and the date. The historical aspect is revealed by the inclusion of posters from the 1878 archives. They describe a conflict, escalating into violence, between the Indians, variously described as Iroquois or Mohawks, and the Canadians who intermarried with them. Rosa Beaulieu, the second most important character, is fleshed out more than any other, except Marcel. She relates her memory of the events which impacted her as an eighteen-year-old girl to her son on his eighteenth birthday. The seemingly sudden change of climate on the reservation, as the Indians turned against the whites because intermarriage was destroying the purity of the reservation, resulted in the death of Rosa’s father when Indians set fire to his barn. Additional Reviews 1293 ‘ethnic cleansings’ occurred in 1973 and 2009, but they are only mentioned, not described. Each chapter includes a blend of specific incidents, comments on relationships , reflection on the impact of events on those relationships, and musings on how people changed. The violent incidents seem downplayed at points, with only matter-of-fact descriptions of what happened during the clashes. At times, reading between the lines is required to determine how the characters react to bigotry and violence and their impact on individual lives. The novel traces life in Canada through most of the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on...