Présages ("Omens")
I met Lisanne Rheault-Leblanc at a time when I was hesitating between being reasonable and following my obvious interest, that is to say, between going to natural sciences and going to arts and letters in CEGEP. She had tempted me a lot by telling me that she had been loving it in the arts and letters program. In the end, I took the bland in-between (humanities), but when I read her first book, I told myself that she made the right choice.
Summary
Présages ("Omens"), are 10 short stories linked together by a feeling of anxiety, a dark color, an oppressive atmosphere, and often a touch of humor. It's impossible to predict what surprise the next story may hold. One tells the story of a little girl imprisoned in the home of a scary man; in another, a woman meets her lover in church for the last time; yet another makes us see life through the eyes of a zebra. The titles, superstitions that were quite obscure to me, only make sense at the end of each story. It is a great mystery that persists until the last sentence.
Impressions
It's obvious right away that Lisanne Rheault-Leblanc knew what she was doing. No sentence is unnecessary. But I wouldn't say that the writing is minimalist; it's rather condensed. The texts are not stingy with descriptions despite their succinctness, and so much the better, since the stories imprint themselves all the more easily on our minds. The images are original, and the connections between elements are both obvious and unusual, for example in this sentence, which struck me:
She detected a slight taste of salt [in the holy water], nothing more, and the memory of her recent tears rose in her throat.
– Lisanne Rheault-Leblanc, If the groom's tie is crooked, it is said that he will be unfaithful, in Présages ("Omens"), p. 87
I admit that, unlike the author, I am not superstitious, and I was afraid it would make me drop out, but the supernatural takes up less space than I thought it would. The stories are deeply human. They all touched me, each in their own way, and the superstitious side of the characters adds a welcome touch of suspense to the stories more than everything.
All in all, an entertaining book written with finesse and accuracy, which I recommend for your bedside table. (But, as a precaution, keep the light on.)
