This aptly titled novel by Canadian
France Théoret explores the life of an unnamed sixteen year old narrator who
begins with the reflection that "I am not a normal person and my life is
not easy". In fact the narrator is a deliberately introspective young
woman who is "closed in" by her own shyness, by the rigid norms of
her boarding school, and by the society she lives in.

The novel begins and ends with the
narrator’s later life, but the focus is on a crucial year at boarding school in
the 1950s, in which she vicariously experiences a world of sexuality, work and
relationships, in the end preferring the limited comforts of her own internal
world. Théoret skillfully weaves fact and fantasy together in creating a deeply
imagined main character whose relentless reflections provide us with clear
insight into her inner world. Théoret has the advantage of having the narrator
recall from her adult perspective, the last year of her childhood. She does
this with singular clarity, recalling details, emotions, names, and
descriptions of her cubicle within the girls’ dormitory. She is helped, of
course, by having cultivated a capacity to reflect in preference to engagement
in social relationships. As the narrator comments: "It was disconcerting
to see how easy it was to observe myself". Much of the novel is spent
exploring the narrator’s relationship with the twenty year old Yolande, who
brings glimpses of an outside world containing difference, excitement and
danger. There is a strong theme of sexuality, represented by the gaze of the
supervising nun as the young women shower, the presence of the masculine in
this feminine world in the form of dorm mate Sylvie’s man’s dressing ground,
and the salacious tales of the blonde student who is the mistress of a black
musician. Names of real characters interchange with imagined ones, and some of
the narrator’s later dialogue carries a strong sense of dissociation,
suggesting she is close to the margins of madness.

There were times when I felt the
author’s presence in the novel, as the narrator uses language more suited to an
academic text than a work of fiction. We hear of "the wider context",
"her words suited the context". Within seven pages the narrator tells
us of three different "images of feminity"; shortly after, she recalls
reading Gheorghiu’s La vingt-cinquieme
heure and realizing that she had been "unaware of political racism…"
and having her eyes opened to the "historical reality of concentration
camps". Then she reacalls that "The diffuse yet omnipresent belief in
our own goodness, which we maintained by remaining closed to historical
realities and social conflicts, told me I was in danger." Some of this
seemed rather didactic and self conscious, and a distraction from the more compelling
personal reflections.

I was reminded in parts of Ishiguro’s
Never Let
Me Go. There is a bleakness about this novel, and about the narrator’s life,
that holds a voyeuristic fascination, and evokes a sense of pity for a life
unlived. Our narrator has little contact with her family, and prefers to accept
the rules of the school because to break them would be to face another layer of
rules. But where Ishiguro uses the spectre of overtly politicized science and
social control to create his vision of an amoral world, Théoret allows herself
only the world as it is (or was), and her ability to probe the mind of one
young person living in it. Thus her story is more convincing and more
immediate.

Altogether this is an intriguing
and absorbing novel. Its particular strength is the vividness with which the
author evokes the narrator’s conflicted sense of self, and the aching shyness
which confines her to her self constructed world.

© 2006 Tony O’Brien

Tony O’Brien is a short story
writer and lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of Auckland, New
Zealand: a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz

Categories: Fiction