Jocelyne Saucier

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Jocelyne Saucier at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival, Guelph 2015

Jocelyne Saucier (born May 27, 1948 in Clair, New Brunswick Province ) is a French-language Canadian writer . She has lived in Rouyn-Noranda in the west of the province of Québec since 1961 .

life and work

Saucier studied political science at the Université Laval with a baccalauréat and then worked as a journalist in Abitibi . Her first novel La vie comme une image was published in 1996, the second Les héritiers de la mine in 2001. In 2006 she published Jeanne sur les routes . In 2007 she rewrote an unpublished children's novel into a play.

Sieglinde Geisler sees something in common between the two novels Saucier, which will be published in German until 2019 , in the NZZ am Sonntag :

“Everything here is larger than life, because Jocelyne Saucier creates a mythical space, along with the abysmal humor that is part of the myth . It is the original myth of North America that Saucier continues to write in her novels. Your characters dream of radical anarchy in the "wilderness", away from civilization. "

- NZZ on Sunday, August 25, 2019, p. 10

Saucier is a member of the "Union des écrivains du Québec" (Writers' Union of the Province of Quebec).

One more life (French original Il pleuvait des oiseaux )

Her novel, published in French in 2011, was nominated for fourteen literary prizes in Canada. It has been available in German since 2015 and also in other languages.

The narrative strands of the novel are

  • the great fire in Canada in 1916, the Matheson Fire , one of many clearing fires at that time that claimed numerous lives, illustrated by the person of a survivor who died just now (around the year 2000) and who left behind many painted pictures;
  • the disappearance of old age dropouts in the "shallows", the thicket of the Canadian wilderness, they are marked by life, "lustful hermits" who submit to no more constraints than the harshness and intensity of the great outdoors. They live as if outside of space and time, in freedom and remote from the state, each in their own forest hut. Only their memories of the old days when they still lived in civilization are still there. They are calm about death, they sense its closeness, they almost play with it, sometimes sending it away. Their meeting in this place is rather coincidental, they start a "new life" here at the same time, leaving the old far behind. Your lifeline to the outside world is formed by two younger men who have the technical equipment. They also ensure that the statutory pensions of the ancients achieve them.

“A story about people who disappear without a trace, about a death pact that gives life its salt, about the irresistible call of the wilderness and about love that gives life its meaning ... The old men would fall from the clouds if you asked them if they are happy. You don't have to be happy, the main thing is that you are free ... You are only afraid of the social workers of this world and of losing your freedom ... And death? He's still hiding in his hiding place. You don't have to worry about death, it lurks in all stories. "

- German version, p. 7, p. 25, p. 192
  • a love story in the circle of these same old men, with an old woman who has happily escaped the psychiatric coercive system of the state after many decades, who has also disappeared from "normal" life and is starting a new life. For the first time she sees a moose in its natural environment.
  • and the long-term project of a younger photographer to exhibit the painted pictures of the survivor from 1916 and her own photographs of old people, who mostly belong to the group of survivors of major fires and have since died, in Toronto , which she ultimately succeeds in doing. She collects faces and stories from the time of the great fires, wants to enable contemporaneity.

“I love stories, I love it when someone tells me a life from the beginning, with all the detours and blows of fate that have led to a person standing in front of me sixty or eighty years later, with a very specific look, very specific ones Hands and a very specific way of saying that life has been good or bad. "

- From the book. The photographer

The novel describes the life of the former three, now two, almost 90-year-old dropouts in the forest, including the hidden, illegal cultivation of marijuana. The calm tone of the novel reflects the serene world of ideas of the old people, including their preoccupation with death, which they may have to face in the near future. A strychnine can in each of the forest huts marks their freedom to put an end to their lives at a time that they themselves determine. Above all, Saucier represents the idea of ​​human freedom, in life as in death. The symbol of this freedom is the nature of Northern Canada, in its grandeur, but also dangerous.

"The escape into another world saved our lives."

- Marie-Desneiges, former psychiatric patient, German edition, p. 106

"(The novel) uses the great fires as a meta-historical device to deliver a sleek modern parable on freedom and survival through reciprocity and interdependence."

- World Literature Today, July 2012

Radio Canada judges the book on the occasion of the "Prix des lecteurs 2012" that it has awarded:

“Le livre raconte l'histoire de trois vieux amis qui tournent le dos au monde et s'enfoncent dans la forêt. "C'est un roman qui a un peu le ton d'un conte, qui traite de l'amitié, de la liberté, de la vieillesse, de la mort." (Saucier) "

- Radio Canada, April 17, 2012

The author colleague Marie Laberge says about this book:

“Il ya dans ces pages une grande maîtrise stylistique, ça, c'est sûr. Mais il ya avant tout une immense compassion pour l'humanité et un immense désir de vivre en connaissance de cause. "

- The writer Marie Laberge, ibid.

Saucier emphasizes that the main theme of the book is aging

“Mais il ne faut pas banaliser la mort. J'ai peur qu'avec le temps, les vieux aient l'impression qu'ils n'ont plus le droit de vivre, qu'on leur fasse sentir que c'est indécent qu'ils soient encore là. Vieillir est un privilège, un privilège de pays riche. Partout, il ya des gens qui meurent avant d'avoir vécu leur vie ... Le Nord m'inspire. Si on sent cet esprit de liberté, c'est parce que c'est encore un pays neuf, où tout est possible. "

- Saucier, La Presse , February 11, 2011

The first half of the book is made up of chapters in which the voice of a different character speaks; In the second half, however, there is an authorial narrator . The German translation by Sonja Finck is particularly praised by the unnamed reviewer on Westdeutscher Rundfunk, WDR 5, as "powerful in language". The reviewer on WDR 3 describes the novel as gripping, touching and fascinating in its portrayal of growing old.

Some motifs in the novel are clearly reminiscent of Henry David Thoreau's novel Walden from the 19th century, in particular the dropout motif in a forest hut and the critical view of state organs that restrict the free individual far too much.

Works (in German)

Reviews (in German)

Award winner (selection) for Il pleuvait des oiseaux

  • Canada Reads / Le combat des livres , Radio Canada, French section, 2013. The "defender" of this book was Geneviève Guérard.
  • Canada Reads, Radio Canada, English section, for the translation, discussion of initially 5 books, 2015. The "defender" of this book was Martha Wainwright .
  • Prix ​​littéraire des collégiens, 2012
  • Prix ​​littéraire, France-Québec, 2012
  • "Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie", 2011

Other awardee

  • "Prix à la création artistique" des Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec , CALQ, for the region l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue, 2010

Further media for "One more life"

Sales success

According to information from Arnaud Foulon, Vice President of the Canadian Association of Publishers , "Livres Canada Books", Il pleuvait des oiseaux was the best-selling book by a Canadian author abroad (in its approx. 12 translations) in 2016.

See also

  • Herald Tribune , the newspaper for which the photographer researched the Great Fires.
  • Témiscamingue , the Quebec region where the Great Fires raged back then.

Web links

notes

  1. ↑ L'Île, L'Infocentre littéraire des écrivains québécois
  2. ↑ in Canada, as in Belgium, an academic qualification, not just a higher school qualification like the German Abitur, as in the metropolitan France
  3. ↑ List in the French Wikipedia on Lemma Jocelyne Saucier
  4. ↑ Dutch: Het regende vogels. Translated by Marianne Kaas. Meridiaan, Amsterdam 2015 ISBN 9048822165 ; English: And the Birds Rained Down. Translator Rhonda Mullins. (For North America :) Coach House, Toronto 2012 ISBN 1552452689 ; (for Europe :) Coach House, London 2013 ISBN 1552452689 Canadian media on the book, with list of links ( Memento of December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ); in Swedish: Det regnade fåglar . Translated from Magdalena Sørensen. Tranan, Stockholm 2013 ISBN 9187179040 . Spanish: Y llovieron pájaros transl . Luisa Lucuix Venegas. Editorial Minuscula, 2018
  5. ↑ cf. en: Matheson Fire and Désastres, section: Incendies et explosions ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved July 31, 2019, and Incendies ravageurs ( English, French ) In: The Canadian Encyclopedia . Retrieved on July 31, 2019., French.
  6. ↑ cf. the book title
  7. ↑ Online "The novel takes up the Great Fires, an artifice that has little to do with history to draw a catchy modern parable, a parable about freedom and survival through reciprocity and interrelationship."
  8. ↑ "The book tells the story of three friends who have grown old. They have turned their backs on the rest of the world and buried themselves in the forest. Saucier: It's a novel that is similar in tone to a fairy tale. It's about friendship, freedom, old age , from death "
  9. ↑ "Of course we see a great stylist at work in this book. But most of all we see a limitless compassion for humanity and a limitless desire to discover the real purpose of life ... It is the north (Canada) from which I get inspiration. If you feel this spirit of freedom, it is because it is still new territory in which anything is possible. "
  10. ↑ "We shouldn't take death lightly. I fear that old people will gradually get the impression that they no longer have a right to life, that they are made to feel that it is somehow inappropriate that they Growing old is a privilege, a privilege in rich countries, and everywhere there are people who die without having lived their lives.
  11. ↑ see web links
  12. ↑ "The memories of the Great Fires still hang over the northern Canadian forests, where three old men found refuge from the world. Among them a legend, Ed Boychuck, the boy who ran through the flames. The photographer knows the stories and faces of the last survivors of the tragedy. When she and an old lady, a fragile bird, are accepted into the community of rough men, a miracle of love and hope occurs. "One more life" is a little book of enchanting warmth and cordiality ... "
  13. ↑ In both language versions, the format consists of the announcement of five book titles for public discussion in January of each year and a television discussion, with changing participants, in March.
  14. ↑ The topic of this discussion was "One Book to Break Barriers", a book that breaks down borders
  15. ^ Rationale , in Frz.
  16. ↑ Trailer , French
  17. ^ Foulon, interview
personal data
SURNAME Saucier, Jocelyne
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian writer
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Clair (New Brunswick), Canada