to laugh, to cry

For now I'll reserve comment on our book club's latest selection, as I am but fifty pages into it.

But I love Michel Basilieres' narrative in Black Bird, which stops and starts as if translated from the bizarre quirk of Quebecois culture it captures:

"She'd married him because he'd made an effort to impress her and convince her of his sincerity, and she'd never before been shown that sincerity was as easily discarded as an empty cigarette package. The rest of her life had been spent trying to make up to her children for so carelessly choosing their father, and overcoming her own disappointment, which he seemed to insist on reinforcing daily. He had the habit of reading aloud from the newspaper the story of some other family's tragedy and laughing at the details; of carelessly leaving pornographic magazines around the house where the children, her friends, and she could see them; of not replying to her questions....
And in the end, the example of her strength in the face of his power was the legacy she would leave her children." (p. 3-4)

This works because of the short sentences. It makes me laugh out loud, and wonder at the loneliness it evokes.


*source of picture