Word: francoeur
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Growing up is learning to hop from the self, the family and the world without getting wet feet. In David Plante's two previous novels of the Francoeur family, these slippery steppingstones have protruded from still, deep waters. The Family, nominated for a National Book Award in 1979, introduced the French-Canadian clan at home in Providence. Papa was a machinist, and his wife, mother of seven sons, a closet hysteric. Son Daniel, then an adolescent, proved to be a precocious observer and subtle dramatist of domestic conflict. In The Country (1981), Daniel was, like Providence-born Plante...
Religion, which had a strong symbolic part in The Family, is now distant and depressing. Mr. and Mrs. Francoeur, devout Roman Catholics, are seen intermittently flitting through their woods like shades in Dante's Purgatorio, while Daniel tussles with sexuality, unspecified rage and moral salvation. Should he refuse to register for the draft or sign up as a conscientious objector? The question threatens to overburden a small, finely balanced novel of physical awakening. But the risks pay off in an unexpected dimension. Daniel's brother Albert, a Marine Corps officer, offers advice that goes beyond the usual gung...
Grief is often most eloquent when understated. Author David Plante's seventh novel is a textbook example of such successful reticence. Its narrator, Daniel Francoeur, is a writer living in London; he pays three visits to his aging parents in Providence, the last of them on the occasion of his father's funeral. Standing beside the coffin with his six brothers, Daniel finds himself weeping: "Then, with a little jolt, I felt that I was being dramatic, and my sobbing stopped...
This flat style may look easy, but what Plante accomplishes with it is not. Beneath the thin ice of Daniel's taciturnity, dark and chilly depths are clearly visible. When they get together, members of the Francoeur family step very gingerly. The phrases "How are you?" and "Are you all right?" become refrains: not just the words people normally say when they have not seen one another for some time, but utterances intended to forestall confessions of private turmoil and pain. Only the parents, in their increasing mental and physical deterioration, are exempt from this iron rule of politeness...