Un objet de beauté

Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal #6

by Michel Tremblay

On retrouve ici les personnages des Chroniques du plateau Mont-Royal dans une atmosphère de soufre et de douleur inconsolable. Marcel, le jeune voyant, va tout tenter pour sauver de la maladie sa tante, le seule personne qui le comprenne et qui connaisse le monde parallèle dans lequel son imagination débridée l'entraîne.

Genres: France, Literature

340 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Né en 1942, Michel Tremblay grandit dans un appartement de Montréal où s'entassent plusieurs familles. Ses origines modestes marqueront d'ailleurs ses œuvres, souvent campées au cœur de la classe ouvrière, où misères sociale et morale se côtoient. En 1964, il participe au Concours des jeunes auteurs de Radio-Canada, avec une pièce de théâtre intitulée Le train, et remporte le premier prix. C'est à peine un an plus tard qu'il écrit l'une de ses œuvres majeures, Les belles-sœurs, dont le succès perdure. La pièce est jouée pour la première fois en 1968 au Théâtre du Rideau Vert.

Michel Tremblay est l'auteur d'un nombre considérable de pièces de théâtre, de romans, et d'adaptations d'œuvres d'auteurs et de dramaturges étrangers. On lui doit aussi quelques comédies musicales, des scénarios de films et un opéra. Ses univers sont peuplés de femmes, tantôt caractérielles et imparfaites, tantôt fragiles et attachantes, qu'il peint avec réalisme et humour. Vivant les difficultés du quotidien, ses personnages au dialecte coloré ont d'ailleurs contribué à introduire dans la dramaturgie et la littérature d'alors un niveau de langue boudé des artistes : le joual.

En 2006, il remporte le Grand Prix Metropolis bleu pour l'ensemble de son œuvre.

En 2017, le Prix Gilles-Corbeil lui est décerné pour l'ensemble de son oeuvre.

Reviews

[Rubis Lantier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Une fin parfaite aux Chroniques, mettant en vedette mon préféré, Marcel, puis toute l’innocence de son âme qui pourtant n’est pas légère, qui souffre, qui ressent trop.
C’est un livre qui fait mal pis qui fait du bien en faisant mal; c’est la même sensation que lorsqu’on fait exprès d’écouter la bonne toune triste sur repeat pour se purger des larmes qu’on a à sortir.
La fin est parfaite, parce qu’elle est exactement celle qu’on voit venir, pas parce qu’elle est facile ou cliché, parce qu’on comprend le chemin que toute cette misère-là trace, parce qu’on comprend que Marcel va avoir besoin de céder à ses pulsions. On la redoute, elle se produit, le cœur nous serre, chaque chose est à sa place.

[Emilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mon moins préféré des Chroniques, en particulier les épisodes de Marcel. J'aurais presque préféré que Tremblay en finisse avec Le premier quartier de la lune, mais ça a valu le coup pour découvrir le nom de la grosse femme, et de retrouver Bartine un peu plus. Elle est tellement chiante et difficile, mais je l'aime malgré tous ses défauts et sa façade de béton.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 6th and final book in the series, and it was my least favorite. (Both the 4th and the 6th book in this series focus more exclusively on one character, and they were both less enjoyable than the other 4 books, largely for that reason.) While Michel Tremblay is a masterful writer and there are passages in here that are pure beauty, I did find this book a somewhat weird way to end a phenomenal series—we basically watch Marcel become insane (or possibly schizophrenic. The series literally ends as he sets his mother’s hair on fire. Perhaps there’s all kinds of literary symbolism I should be deciphering here—but as a layperson, this was a disappointing way for such an amazing series to end. That being said, I wholeheartedly recommend this complete series without pause.

My favorite quotes:

“Tears. She’d thought she didn’t have any left and here they were, running down her neck and onto her pillow.” p16

“...what she needs now is not so much what her mother said as the resurrection of a memory. Of the comfort it represents.” p19

“Yes, she did what she could. Would life have preferred something different? Then let life take care of them: she has no more strength, she’s abdicating. She has abandoned any vague urge to struggle because fate, goddamn fate, goddamn life, goddamn existence gets in her way, they always have, they give her a hard time, they trip her up, make her fall. She has fallen once again, a little lower, a little deeper inside the deepest wave of her existence; she’s drowning, she’s well aware of that, she accepts it, she’s waiting for the day when resistance will be impossible, when the very notion of resistance will no longer be an option and she’ll be able at last to collapse...” p41

“The two women can’t have guessed it, but the laughter that explodes from Marcel in the dining room is a ball of emotion that rises to his throat and comes out in great waves of delight, of dismay too, because his aunt has just used a word that comes from so long ago, from the far-off Duhamel his grandparents had left to settle in town, she’d said “dearie” in that typical way his grandmother Victoire was always saying it, she’d pronounced it the same way, she’d spoken exactly like her mother-in-law, with the same intonation, the same, exactly the same music; for a blink of an eye, Marcel thought he was hearing and seeing Victoire, sitting in her rocking chair in the corner of the dining room of the Fabre Street apartment, he thought that he could smell the old woman’s odor of camphor that she gave off from November to May, that he could hear her voice, broken but cheerful; for a fraction of a second he was listening to his entire childhood and a mixture of joy and pain bursts from him in a cascade of childlike laughter.” p64

“And they’re off, the infernal machine is up and running, a machine oiled by years of endless verbal battles that don’t go anywhere. Outrageous remarks will be made by both parties, bitchy words exchanged in a strident tone, one thinking the other has gone too far; for the sole pleasure of outwitting her, and so on till one of them cracks or slams the door because of an impending migraine, fake or real.

Johanne has come to join her uncle and attend this prelude of what lies ahead for all of them in years to come. Marcel is overwhelmed, as usual, but she,
surprisingly, takes it all in with a certain detachment, as if she were watching a show or a television screen. Beneath a fragile appearance, she is building a shell that’s liable to cut her off from the real world, too.

The argument continues, absurd, sometimes funny, because the protagonists are prepared to do anything, even the worst, to score a point. Which one will win? The one who’s less tired, of course, who’s more resilient. And the one who’s more resilient this morning is Albertine, who slept fairly well last night, while Therese had a bad night.” p172-173

[Mireille Duval · Rating 3 out of 5]

C'est un livre déprimant. Ça travaille notre gratitude pour nos situations dans la vie, comme on dit. Le retour à la rue Fabre aurait pu être tellement plus glorieux... j'essayais d'écrire une version d'univers parallèle dans ma tête où tous ces gens auraient pu être aimés comme ils aurait dû l'être en même temps que je le lisais.

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Je les ai terminés! Les six tomes des Chronicles du Plateau de Michel Tremblay. Une histoire tellement touchante, d'une famille Montréalaise qui habite un quartier populaire, le célèbre Plateau Montréal. La capacité de M. Tremblay de trouver un sens dans la vie quotidienne, même dans les tâches ménagères, nous démontre que la vie est belle, malgré la souffrance.

[Laurène · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,75

[Mélissa]

Abandon à 55%. 1ere fois que je n'accroche pas à un Tremblay 😓

[Chantal Vincelette]

Tome 6 des Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal.
Le dernier.
Mort de Nana.
Institutionnalisation de Marcel

[Paroles · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that the 6th installment from the Chroniques du plateau Mont-Royal did not need to be written. Nothing profoundly new about the characters or their situation is revealed here, nothing added to what a reader already knows from reading the first 5. What happens in book 6 could be summed up in one sentence in an epilogue to the book 5. The only new element we learn is the name of the "grosse femme" and her ethnic background, but there is no real reason for breaking the series tradition of leaving her nameless and lifting her off the ground this way. What adds to inconsistency is the absence of Edouard, a person who was deeply in love with this lady.

[Frank · Rating 4 out of 5]

For the final novel in his sexology "Chroniques du Plateau Mont-Royal," Michel Tremblay brings the lapsed mystic Marcel into an uncomfortable young adulthood. It's a tale of loss and alienation as Marcel, his sister, Therese, and his mother, Albertine, all face their disappointing lives — as a much a result of the colonization of Quebec as their own poor choices — as Marcel's aunt, the only character truly sympathetic to him, is dying. There are still moments of visionary wonder, particularly in Marcel's film-inspired fantasies, but the whole seems almost relentlessly grim. To learn more of the character's futures, you would need to read the play "Albertine in Five Times."