Mister Roger and Me by Marie-Renée Lavoie – Québec City in the 1980s and Lady Oscar
Mr Roger and Me by Marie-Renée Lavoie (2010) Original French Canadian title: La petite et le vieux.
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J’étais parvenue à me convaincre que j’étais un garçon et je tenais à ce qu’on m’appelle Joe. J’aurais aimé Oscar, comme mon personnage de dessins animés préféré mais, à l’époque, Oscar était le squelette des classes de biologie et un nouveau type de balai révolutionnaire. Alors je me contentais de Joe, même si sa syllabe en cul-de poule sonnait comme une banale exclamation. Quand on évitait de penser aux Dalton, ça pouvait faire sérieux. |
I had managed to convince myself that I was a boy and I wanted people to call me Joe. I would have preferred Oscar, like my favorite anime character, but at the time, Oscar was the name of skeletons in biology classes and a new type of revolutionary broom. I settled with Joe, even if its pouting syllable sounded like an ordinary exclamation. If you didn’t think about the Daltons, Joe could be a serious name. (my translation) |
This is Hélène speaking. She’s the heroine of La petite et le vieux by Marie-Renée Lavoie. Hélène is an adult now and she remembers her life when she was eight-year-old. We’re in a working-class neighbourhood in Québec City, in the 1980s. Hélène is obsessed with Lady Oscar, the Japanese anime set in France just before the French Revolution.
I’m not sure English-speaking readers know about Lady Oscar anime. It is based on the manga The Rose of Versailles by Riyoko Ikeda. According to Wikipedia, the anime was broadcasted in Québec and in France in 1986 and I remember seeing it on the French TV. In this series, Lady Oscar is a woman, educated as a boy by a father who was tired of having only daughters. Her military education helps her join the royal guard and, dressed as a man, she becomes Oscar who protects the young Marie-Antoinette. With her best friend André, they live all kinds of dangerous adventures.
So, our heroine Hélène wants to be like Lady Oscar. She wishes she were a boy and when in difficulty, she always wonders “What would Lady Oscar do?”
Hélène lives with her parents and her sisters Margot and Catherine. She’s in a loving home but her parents struggle financially. It’s hard to make ends meet. Her father is a middle-school teacher, a job he doesn’t do by choice and it weighs on him. Hélène decides to help her parents and gets odd jobs like distributing newspapers or serving drinks at bingo afternoons.
Then Mr Roger moves into her neighbourhood. He’s Hélène’s polar opposite. He’s old, grumpy and always talking about his upcoming death. He drinks too much. He’s lonely and at odds with his family. And yet, they strike an odd friendship and become daily companions.
Through Hélène’s eyes, we see the life of her neighborhood and the Québec society of the time. It’s the life of a child who accidentally discovers how poor one of her classmates is and who talks about her school life. She’s hardworking, running around the neighborhood before dawn with her newspapers. She thinks she’s on her own but we understand that some adults watch her.
Hélène describes her family life, her father’s struggles with his job, her mother’s planed meals and all kinds of everyday life’s events. She sees the world through Lady Oscar lenses and keeps her innocence because she’s too young to know much about the world. And yet, event after event, she gets a greater picture of the world around her and we understand that her home life is not as easy as she thinks it is. I wonder how much of Lavoie is in Hélène as she was born in 1974 and grew up in the Limoilou neighborhood in Québec city.
The quote at the beginning of the novel comes from The Kites, by Romain Gary: « Rien ne vaut la peine d’être vécu qui n’est pas d’abord une œuvre d’imagination ou alors la mer de serait plus que de l’eau salée… ». (“Nothing is worth living that is not first a work of imagination, otherwise the sea would only be salted water…”)
Hélène’s imagination works around Lady Oscar and her adventures. The anime seeps into her life, enticing her to see things through her own glasses and to be brave, to take chances. Hélène comes to life thanks to a lively and poetic prose and her unique view of the world. Although the Gary quote comes from The Kites, La petite et le vieux compares better to La vie devant soi and the relationship between young Momo and old Madame Rosa.
I don’t know how Wayne Grady translated French Canadian into English. As always, I enjoyed the specific expressions and Marie-Renée Lavoie’s style is sensitive and imaginative.
It also reminded me of Michel Tremblay and the Mont-Royal series set in Montreal in the 1940s for its child characters, its working-class neighborhood and the darkness under the apparent lightness of the children’s views of the world.
La petite et le vieux is a lovely novel. It’s not a postcard picture of Hélène’s childhood but a realistic one. It’s a Doisneau vision of a neighborhood, with Hélène catching the beauty where it is and bringing joy with her irony and positive thinking.
A great read if you’re looking for a book that will take you somewhere else and won’t wear you out with its grimness.
PS: I prefer the Québec cover to the English one. What about you?
Book Around the Corner 
I loved those houses with external stairs when I was in Montreal but I did wonder how older or less abled people might cope with them, especially with ice and snow. I hadn’t heard of Lady Oscar cartoon series – sounds really fun!
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About the houses: I agree with you.
I wondered if you’d hear about the manga The Rose of Versailles. It seems to be a huge thing, according to Wikipedia.
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This sounds rather delightful and indeed ideal for these times, it makes me think of Mathilde de Morny and how remarkable it was to be able to live as Max so openly at that time.
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It’s a good book to read at the moment, as we’re heading straight to our third lockdown.
If you think about Proust and Sodome and Gomorrha, in the high society, gays and lesbians were accepted. A lot more than in Britain at the same time.
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It bugs me that in books about olden times the heroes and heroines are always pro-aristocracy. I want my heroes and the heroes my children, grandchildren read about to be pro-revolution, and for the kings and queens and nobles to be seen for the blood suckers they were.
I’m glad that Hélène leads a working class life, I just wish her teachers would help her deconstruct Lady Oscar.
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I think that Hélène is more attracted by Lady Oscar’s tomboy act than dazzled by the aristocracy part. She’d like to be a boy.
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Not for me. Is this any sort of play on Mr Roger’s Neighbourhood?
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I don’t know what you’re referring to. Maybe it is, but then it comes from the translator. The original title is La petite et le vieux.
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I loved this slim story as well. And my copy was graced with the charming inset illustration that you’ve expressed a preference for. It would be a lovely, light-ish choice for pandemic reading!
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It’s a great read for these times and a good picture of Québec at the time.
Have you read other books by her?
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One of her children’s books, for fun with French: La Curieuse Histoire d’un chat moribond. (Even in an instance like this, there are always some nouns that I stumble over.) And she has had another novel translated into English since Mister Roger (The Autopsy of a Boring Wife) which seemed to be either a love it/hate it read. I’ve not gotten to it yet, but no reflection on how much I enjoyed her others, only a matter of too many books!
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