Author, poet and screenwriter Heather O'Neillis championing the novelThe Futureby Catherine Leroux, translated bySusan OuriouonCanada Reads2024!
O'Neill's first novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, won Canada Reads2007 and she's looking forward to joining this year's show as a panellist.
The great Canadian book debate will take place on March 4-7. This year, we are looking forone book to carry us forward.
The debates will be hosted byAli Hassanandwill be broadcast onCBC Radio One,CBC TV,CBC Gem,CBC Listenand onCBC Books.The debates will take place live at 10:05 a.m. ET.You can tune in live or catch a replay on the platform of your choice.Check out all the broadcast details here.
From Canada Reads winning authorto panellist
O'Neill'sCanada Readsjourney began in 2007, when musician John K. Samson championed her novel,Lullabies for Little Criminals, to victory. This year, she's on the other side of the debate and is excited to use her literary expertise to make the case forThe Future.
O'Neill is a novelist, short story writer andessayist based in Montreal.She was the first back-to-back finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize forThe Girl Who WasSaturday Nightin 2014 and her short story collectionDaydreams of Angelsin 2015.Lullabies for Little Criminalswas also a Giller Prize finalist.
Her novel The Lonely Hearts Hotelwon the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction andwas longlisted for Canada Reads 2021.When We Lost Our Headsis her most recent novel that follows two extraordinary young women — Marie Antoine and Sadie Arnett —19th century aristocrats living in Montreal's wealthiest neighbourhood, the Golden Mile.
Being a contender on this year'sCanada Readsfeels almost like a full circle moment, said O'Neill in an interview withCBC Books.
"Lullabies for Little Criminals was my debut novel and after it was announced as the winner, [my daughter and I]went to the big Indigo downtown," she said. "And we sat up on the gallery and because there was a wall of my books,we watched people walk in and take the book to buy it. And every time one of them took a book off the shelf, we would jump up and down and applaud."
- Heather O'Neill reflects on what it was like when her debut novel won Canada Reads 2007
"So it was such a wonderful experience for me that when they called and they're like, 'Do you want to be a panellist? I'm like, 'Absolutely, bring me back to that world.'"
LISTEN | Heather O'Neilldiscusses Canada Reads2024 onLet's Go:
Showcasing Quebec writing
A voracious reader since childhood, O'Neill had some parameters to narrow down her search for herCanada Reads.
"Some of the major listsused to always have a French Canadian title on them," she said."But I noticed that for the past couple of yearsthey haven't been on the Giller list or theCanada Reads list.And every time that happened I was a little disappointed."
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Miss theCanada Readscontenders onThe Next Chapter? Catch up here
She wanted to champion a book in translation to drum up interest in francophone writers across the rest of the country. After O'Neill readThe Future, she knew that it would make a great pick forCanada Reads.
"There arejust so many themes," she said. "There's so much to talk about just inthe writing itself, the way this book is structured and the content and the language. It seemed like there was a lot from my own knowledge bank that would allow me to talk about the book in an interesting way."
LISTEN | Canada Reads magnifies sales for Windsor-published novel on alternate history of Detroit: Windsor Morning7:45Canada Reads magnifies sales for Windsor-published novel on alternate history of Detroit
A speculative and eeriealternate history of Detroit
The Futureis set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society.
The Futurewon the Jacques-BrossardAward for speculative fiction.
Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the2016 Scotiabank Giller Prizefor The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collectionLe mur mitoyen.Leroux won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for English to French translation for her translation ofDo Not Say We Have Nothingby Madeleine Thien.
Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award in 2009 for her translation ofCharlotte Gingras's Pieces of Me,which was published in French asLa liberté? Connais pas.She has been shortlisted for the award six other times. Ouriou lives in Calgary.
"There's still a huge French community in that area, in southern Ontario, the area of Windsor and also in the Michigan area — so the French never left in reality — but my idea was that it never became American," Leroux said onThe Next Chapter.
- Catherine Leroux imagines an alternate history of Detroit in her book,The Future
"So basically in my world, Detroit or Fort Détroit is the second biggest francophone city in North America after Montreal. So that's the setting. I think that as soon as I started being interested in the history of Detroit, it went without saying that I would have to delve into that."
It was a nice way to rewrite history and rewrite the history of language at the same time.- Catherine Leroux
"Then it was also for novelistic reasons because I wanted to be able to write dialogue that felt closer to the dialects and the French that I hear around me.
"If I'm writing about English characters, but I'm writing their dialogue into French, then it can't really take that shape. So it wasa nice way to rewrite history and rewrite the history of language at the same time."
LISTEN | Catherine Leroux discussesThe Future: The Next Chapter12:23Catherine Leroux imagines an alternate history of Detroit in her book, The Future
The importance of translation
O'Neill is excited to be championing a book in translation andplansto talking about how different Quebec writing is in terms of storytelling conventions.
"Sometimes, if you've read a book in translation you might just think it's mad," she said. "But it's like, 'No, that's how Quebec writes and the images and ideas and themusicality of it all."
Despite being bilingual, O'Neill was happy to havereadThe Futurefirst in English, because then she was able to judge it as a translation. She's since read it in French and commends translator Susan Ouriou for her work.
"Catherine Lerouxis someone who's really hard to translate because her work is so layered and metaphorical and imagistic and strange and experimental," she said.
Catherine Leroux is someone who's really hard to translate because her work is so layered and metaphorical and imagistic and strange and experimental.- Heather O'Neill
A translator in her own right, Lerouxwas slightly concerned about how wellThe Futurewould translate to English.
"I had paid such close attention to the way the language and the dialect was constructed that I didn't really know whether or not the translator would be able to deal with it," Leroux toldCBC Books."Because there's one thing that's untranslatable:I have Francophone characters living in Detroit. The book is going to be in English, so you're going to lose that."
"But then when I readSusan's translation, I felt like there had been no loss at all. Because shereally made it her own and had her own way of like transposing those linguistic oddities."
"It was a lot of fun and quite a challenge," said Ouriouabout working with said oddities in an interview withCBC Books. A veteran translator, she's excited to see one join the great book debate.
"I think so many people don't realize that a lot of our culture is based on books and reading of languages that we wouldn't have been able to read on our own.Andat this time especially, we do need to be speaking to each other and listening to each other."
LISTEN | Heather O'Neill and Catherine Leroux on The Next Chapter: The Next Chapter24:50Canada Reads panelist Heather O’Neill and The Future author Catherine Leroux discuss the annual battle of the books
