Les bonheurs caducs par Élyse-Andrée Héroux

Abstract

Héroux, Élyse-Andrée. Les bonheurs caducs. Montréal: Québec Amérique, 2015. ISBN 978-2-7644-2845-0. Pp. 382. $25 Can. This book offers a tenderly funny portrait of Rosemarie, a young woman dealing with life’s ups and downs, which recently has had more downs than ups. Rosemarie had been blissfully content working for a small publishing firm. Her boss, Jacques Bossé, had originally offered the company, Les éditions Laine d’Acier, as a present to his wife Hélène for their twentieth anniversary. Unfortunately, after just one enchanting year of directing the company in a small appartment building with a discrete sign in the north of Montreal, Hélène was hit by a car as she was crossing the street after having had her hair done. She died instantly. In her honor and memory, Jacques took over the reins of the company. He relocated the company to be closer to Repos Saint François d’Assise, the cemetery where Hélène was buried. This move was a risk as the company’s new location was far from downtown Montreal and not easily accessible either by public transportation or personal vehicle. But the newly christened company Dassier paid well and took extremely good care of its employees and authors:“Jacques Bossé se dévouait jour et nuit à sa boîte comme on laisse tout tomber pour prendre soin d’un enfant triste. Fidéliser son monde, il était bon là-dedans”(37). Unfortunately, at age sixty-six and after twenty years of devotion to the company, Jacques’s heart gave out. Taking over his place was his son Bruno, an abusive man who enjoyed wielding his power and who intended to shut down the company. After one year, he changed his mind, but not without making significant changes, such as firing Yolande, the “fidèle adjointe de son père” (39) and replacing her with the young Anaïs, the editor who “venue du milieu de la pub, beauté racée, intelligente comme un singe, pas la langue dans sa poche même que des jours on en venait à rêver de la lui passer à la déchiqueteuse”(39). It is thus that Rosemarie’s life takes a dramatic turn for the worse as she navigates the waters of a work environment that each day becomes increasingly hostile, combined with her need to move in with her good-for-nothing brother after a break-up with the man she thought was the “ideal” boyfriend, while the safety net of her girlfriends disintegrates. Yet even though everything in Rosemarie’s life has changed except for Rosemarie herself and that there is no escaping it, she gradually matures into a woman who is able to go with the flow and begins to appreciate what good she has in her life. Whereas previously she would have focused on the negative, her newly acquired maturity allows her to be open to new possibilities:“Il ne lui coûterait rien de s’y rendre, de s’y gaver de bonnes choses, ni un sou ni un effort, peut-être même qu’elle aurait du plaisir, qui sait” (252). Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini 266 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 ...