Utop by Marie-Christine Arbour (review)

ARBOUR, MARIE-CHRISTINE. Utop. Montréal: Triptyque, 2012. ISBN 978-2-89031-742-0. Pp. 209. $23 Can. Leucid Cyr, a single, forty-year-old Montréalais, leaves for a dangerous vacation in the jungles of Ecuador. Chaos will replace the placid order of his life: “Je cherche le choc qui me donnera une seconde envolée” (8). He will be sharing his experience with five others and a guide and will be writing his story as it occurs. Each of the travelers is there for a reason: the chess player wishes to learn how to win; the ex-model wants to show her agent that she can survive when her lap of luxury is removed; the social worker couple desires a baby, which is not happening in their urban life; the construction worker is proving his independence from the Hare Krishna world in which he was raised. All of the characters, including the narrator, are in search of self, and are replacing their old reality with a new one where the five senses are awakened: the odors, colors, sounds, tastes, and temperatures are no longer banal, but extravagant. The trek is also a way for Leucid to come to grips with his past as a frail, beaten child who turned to math to drown out the negativity of his home and school lives: “Nous passons de l’abondance à l’indigence. Nous allons vers le Rien” (49). Leucid is facing his own heart of darkness: “Je ne sais plus ce qu’il faut espérer de ce voyage” (51). He is, however, impacted by the heights of beauty of the countryside, and the depths of despair and poverty he sees. Based on the author’s own travel notes, entering the jungle is both poetic and hallucinatory: “Ma première impression sera celle d’une verticalité délirante investie d’une densité menaçante” (66). The group will spend two weeks sharing a hut, hunting, fishing for piranha, eating monkey and crocodile, smoking pot, bathing in the muddy waters, sleeping under mosquito netting, and trying to figure out the importance of life itself as well as their place in the universe. Leucid questions his ambiguity and orientation: is he man or woman, coward or hero, nature lover or urban fan? All the while, he is quoting Sand, Baudelaire, Proust, Duras, and Saint-Exupéry. Besides Heart of Darkness, there is the feeling of entering the territory of Lord of the Flies. The group dynamic comes even more into play after one of them is bitten by a snake: all they can do is wait to see what happens next. “Mais ici, dans la jungle, tout est trop vrai. Le malheur arrive spontanément, sans raison apparente” (132). Living life on the edge seems to be their basic need, putting the group before the individual. Is Eve—the one who is bitten—their redemption ? All of them fall ill; misery marries ecstasy: “Ici la perdition n’existe pas. En revanche, il y a la peur” (142). Unable to complete their two weeks, they are flown to a missionary village to recuperate. Questions of purgatory, of God’s presence or lack of it, of what is right and normal, or deviant and evil, the role of instinct versus reason, fill Leucid’s last day and night in the jungle. When the group reunites five months later, they are undeniably changed by the experience. THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 86, No. 5, April 2013 Printed in U.S.A. REVIEWS Creative Works edited by Nathalie Degroult 984 Arbour’s book is a passionate, rapid-paced adventure written with style and gusto, with short but powerful sentences, literary and musical references, and a true flair for the questions that both upset us and lure us to find unwanted responses . We may not be “cured,” “rested,” or “better” from these adventures, but we will have been brave enough to test some dangerous waters. Santa Rosa Alliance Française (CA) Davida Brautman BEGAG, AZOUZ. Salam Ouessant. Paris: Albin Michel, 2012. ISBN 978-2-226-24007-1. Pp. 181. 16 a. Pour mieux connaitre ses filles, un jeune père décide de les emmener en vacances dans un...