After setting fire to a garbage can during a protest, Jean-François is finally getting the girls and the respect for which he has hungered. He has managed to escape his controlling, scornful mother, who made him view women in a biased manner. Jean-François succumbs to a bit of nostalgia. The summer before he is to realize his dream, and leave the town which has been hell for him, he meets Julie, the love of his life, while working for Woody’s, a movie rental-café-performance shop. He enjoys her company, and discussing Canadian films. However, she is fifteen, and when faced with the decision to stay in hell for her, or leave to start anew in Montreal, there is but one real option. Coming-of-age stories are usually a dime a dozen, but this one is fresh. JeanFran çois’s angst is felt by all youth. It is not simply his personal anxiety, but that of an entire generation of Québécois youth, unsure of its identity, its commitment to a tranquil revolution, its future in a province that refuses to choose. Drouin packs his novel with Québécois phraseology, Americanisms, and just the right amount of history to maintain our interest. Jean-François’s “up” and “down” nature is something we can all relate to. His failure in relationships, with his family, friends, and girlfriends, is a sign of his immaturity, but is also part of his search for self. The novel poses the eternal question: “Can we ever really change?” The depression which ensues is not Jean-François’s alone: “Le Québec, cet adolescent boutonneux qui refuse de grandir et qui se plaint tout le temps de tout sans rien faire pour se botter l’cul” (166). Jean-François’s decision to put it all on the line, to seek Julie no matter what, is admirable. How humiliating for him when yet again his attempt is thwarted, and he is in the hands of his childhood tormentor turned cop. What happens next concerning his father, his mother, his ex-love, and his friends, as well as his future needs to be read, and is quite poignant. In an astute “postface,” Drouin explains how the two stories recounted—Quebec and JeanFran çois—are actually one. The fact that neither could/would choose became his novel, although at first he was leaning in the direction of a movie script. The director of Première impression calls Drouin “un bâton de dynamite muni d’un clavier d’ordinateur” (244). This reviewer is inclined to agree. “Si la tendance se maintient,” Drouin has a promising career as a writer. Having dedicated his first novel to those who told him he would not succeed, he has the last word. Millburn H.S. (NJ), emerita Davida Brautman FAYE, ÉRIC. Nagasaki. Paris: Stock, 2010. ISBN 978-2-23406-166-8. Pp.112. 13 a. Si le genre se vendait mieux en France, Stock aurait appelé ce court récit tiré d’un “fait divers” (9) une nouvelle plutôt qu’un roman. Ou peut-être même un conte, comme le suggère la policière: un conte japonais à la Maupassant, “réel”, réaliste, poétique et fantastique. L’histoire se passe au Japon aujourd’hui. Un Japon bien représenté dans sa richesse culturelle et économique, tant passée (avec tatami, bento, et non sans humour, ninja et films de yakuza, mais aussi plus subtilement , ses kamis, ses “family-mart”, ses robots et sa littérature de Scandale, du chrétien Shusaku Endo aux contes extraordinaires de Edogawa), que postindustrielle , dans son histoire (Deshima, les bombes atomiques), sa postmodernité (“groupies” [32]) et ses laissés-pour-compte (vieux, chômeurs). M. Shimura est un vieux célibataire, “élevé dans le catholicisme” (31) à Nagasaki. Météorologue, il a un bon emploi, bien qu’il reconnaisse qu’il pourrait le perdre et qu’il connaît Reviews 591 mieux le ciel que sa propre réalité. Un jour, il soupçonne que quelqu’un lui vole de petites choses (yaourt, jus de fruit) dans son réfrigérateur. Après avoir...