Tag: reading

From the judges

Here is what the judges for the Whistler Independent Book Awards had to say about Day of Epiphany. My profound gratitude to Darcie Friesen Hossack and Stella Harvey for their support and enthusiasm for my novel!

Read this book.

No, really. The review could end right there. But since I want to make sure everyone buys multiple copies of Jerome J Bourgault’s Day of Epiphany (for yourselves, for family, especially for your local library), I’m going to use every word of this space given to me.

Day of Epiphany accomplishes everything that brilliant, important literature is supposed to do: It is beautifully rendered. It brings its characters to light and life, with form and breath. It informs. And it engages the reader’s empathy and their moral compass, orienting it towards both past and present injustice.

The injustice in this novel is profound. In Québec, in the 1940s and 50s, when the Sainte-Madeleine Institute (orphanage) burns down in the middle of the night, killing several children, a perfect storm of religious, governmental and societal cruelty gathers strength around the survivors.

“… children who died… were the embodiment of sin,” Bourgault writes, “… the sin of their unwed mothers.” And with that, when the institute is rebuilt as a psychiatric hospital, and the children “reclassified” as mental patients to garner more funds from Québec’s corrupt premier and its purse, the horrors begin for those on the “bottom rung of the social latter… (with) no rights under the law.”

Beginning as a sort of confession, Day of Epiphany is ultimately Sister Cassandra’s story. And yet, in the various circles of hell that surround her, we experience the lives of three young girls, along with others who are both caught up in the same awake nightmares, and those whose purpose it is to sustain those nightmares. And while we experience in this novel forced institutionalization at nearly its worst, we also come into the circles of “powerful men who paid extra for discretion and even more for youth.”

Darcie Friesen Hassock

A searing indictment of a shameful and violent time in Canada’s history, Day of Epiphany chronicles the plight of the children of an orphanage, later turned mental institution through the financial support of Quebec’s Duplessis government at the time. Told mostly from a nun’s perspective, we meet many of the characters she is charged with, feel sister Cassandra’s guilt as she sees what is happening to the children, and cheer for those children who refuse to bow down to the neglect, torture, and abuse they are subjected to. I felt the innocence of the children when again and again, they asked, “what did we do wrong?” And I also felt incredible anger and disgust as I turned page after page to witness the abuses dispensed by nuns, priests and doctors who basically experimented on these children. This was an upsetting read, one filled with strong characters; difficult, yet necessary details and lots of suspense. Everyone should read this book and understand this despicable period of Canada’s history in the hopes we never, never let it happen again.

Stella Harvey

Writing about writing: English for French… in Québec… in the 1950s

A unique aspect of Day of Epiphany, which I never had to consider before, was the temporal and cultural distance between myself and the characters I was writing for. This is an English language novel intended for an English speaking audience, but it’s set in 1950s Québec. Unless specifically indicated (three or four scenes in particular) the characters would of course be speaking to one another in French throughout the novel. How to deal with that? Do I address the question at all? The best solution I could come up with was to make the narration, and the dialogue in particular, as natural as possible. As much as I could, I avoided the inclusion of French terms, unless there was no appropriate or better term in English. For instance, at the beginning of the first chapter, I make reference to a père prédicataire (an itinerant preacher), and I use the term curé (parish priest) a fair amount throughout the book as well. These were French terms that I thought important enough for the reader to learn. On the other hand, as tempting as it may be I never make use of the expansive Québécois lexicon of colourful curse words (tabarnak, câlisse, ostie, Crisse, trou de cul, bâtard, etc.). Instead, when my characters need to curse or call someone a nasty name, they do so in English. To do otherwise would be the written equivalent of the tired trope of countless Hollywood war movies, as when German soldiers speak to one another in English with German accents. 

Then, once I’ve committed to writing in English, I had to ensure that the language was consistent with the period, i.e. the 1950s. I recently read a scene from a novel that takes place in the 1980s, in which a character uses the expression “a big ask.” Having lived through the 1980s, I can promise you that NO ONE ever said “a big ask” when meaning “a lot to ask for.” Reading an expression so clearly from the 21st century in a scene from the ‘80s diminished the authenticity of the book for me just a bit, and I had no intention of making that kind of mistake in my own novel, whether the characters are ostensibly speaking French or not. 

At the same time, I deliberately avoided the use of ’50s era vernacular, simply because—rightly or wrongly— I identified it too closely with American popular culture, which felt out of place for for a story set in Québec. I did however use a couple of terms —namely “darwinists” instead of “evolutionary biologists” and “Mohammedans” instead of “Muslims”— that I felt would be appropriate for the period, especially by members of the clergy.

Publication is now days away. I’m spending the remaining days going over (and over and over) the print-ready files for final approval. As usual for me at this point in the process, I’m feeling both elated, excited, and scared shitless!

I wouldn’t want to hazard a guess as to how many times I’ve read Day of Epiphany in the past four months, and I’m happy to say that a) I’m more than satisfied with the quality of the writing, and b) I haven’t found any new typos of late. I’m trusting that you, my faithful readers, will find any remaining mistakes once the book comes out. We’ll know soon enough!