France Daigle

I started reading this one during the work week, grabbing snatches of time to read it when I could. I soon discovered the story to be more complicated than I had originally envisioned. As I was unable to give it my full attention, I decided to set it aside for when I could start again at page one and give the book my full, undivided attention.

What an unusual story. I just don't know what to make of it. The premise sounded very promising: During a year of world-making news events - the deaths of Stalin and then Queen Mary of England, Winston Churchill being awarded the Nobel prize for literature, Elizabeth II's coronation, the United States testing of the first H-bomb, the Rosenbergs executed, etc - Baby M is born with celiac's disease in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Diagle presents her story in a very nonlinear format, choosing to create something that I can only attempt to describe as a cross between radiating circles of story telling with a variation on the Six Degrees of Separation concept. Diagle tries to connect her characters to history with things like Baby M's mother celebrating her birthday on the same day as Winston Churchill but I felt that this didn't work as well as possibly hoped. She does a better job giving the reader Baby M's mother and Nurse Vautour's impressions of the world news events as they read them in the French language Moncton newspaper l'Evangeline, which Baby M's father is the editor of.

Daigle's presentation of the various events in history during the early 1950's does make for interesting reading. Her writing style is fluid and easy to settle into, even when she decides to take the reader down unique pathways of metaphysical and philosophical reasoning or digressions into Roland Barthes's Writing Degree Zero. I haven't read Writing Degree Zero, which may be part of the problem with my understanding of this novel.

The purpose of the story - what it means to be born a writer in the middle of the twentieth century - has missed its mark with me. While I can see the literary use of Baby M, her parents and Nurse Vautour to provide a 1953 viewpoint of events, they are overshadowed by the historical, literary and philosophical discussion Diagle engages in to the point of being mere props, and minor ones at that. I could see the connection she was making at the start of the book to tie the various components of her story together, but as I continued to make my way through the book, the connections started to thin out or fail entirely.

Overall a great story I would recommend solely for the historical events of the early 1950's discussed within its pages and for a glimpse into Acadian Moncton, New Brunswick of the time period. Beyond that, I am at a loss to explain this one unless it is an attempt to show a parallel between the struggle for life of Baby M, her turning point in her health and the turning point the entire world faced, but that is grasping at straws a bit. Another reader may have better luck with teasing out the meaning of this one.… (altro)