Just Fine

Pas pire #1

by France Daigle, Robert Majzels (Translation)

Just Fine is a touching and often hilarious novel that traces the mishaps and misadventures of a conflicted agoraphobe: a woman psychologically restricted to a life indoors but spiritually inclined to wander the meadows, roads, and community beyond the house and river of her youth. Her struggle assumes historic proportions when her neighbors in the small town of Dieppe begin to dream of their own escapes from the insular, predictable cadences of life in Acadia: Camil changes his name; Terry embarks on a voyage of discovery; Carmen studies exotic river deltas; Elizabeth searches for a transcendent love; and the woman at the center of it all, the agoraphobe, dreams of travelling to Paris and telling her story to a French television star. The course of their endeavors, like the river that dominates Dieppe, twists and turns, and playfully reveals a landscape of wonderment and new beginnings. In its brilliant collage of river lore, art history, astrology, and mythology France Daigle's rich and witty novel journeys beyond the cultural, psychological, and literary bounds within which its characters live and leads us to where history, fantasy, and memory collide.

Genres: Fiction, Canadian Literature, France

154 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

France Daigle est née à Moncton en 1953, où elle vit toujours. Auteur d’une dizaine de romans, elle a aussi coécrit plusieurs scénarios ainsi que quatre pièces de théâtre. Elle a remporté en 1991 le prix Pascal-Poirier d’excellence en littérature, décerné par le gouvernement du Nouveau-Brunswick. Elle a reçu le Prix du Lieutenant-gouverneur pour l’excellence dans les arts littéraires.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some good stuff here, but did not really cohere
(whoops, cripes and oh dear,
the rhyme was accidental, that clear?)
(Please consider this review sincere
no matter how it may appear)


'tis queer
why I should persevere
with such sheer
idiocy. And unclear
how to stop.

Oh.
That'l do it.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

J'ai bien aimé ce livre.

Le style est très différent : il y a plusieurs histoires qui se passent en même temps. Il y a l'histoire the l'auteure elle-même, qui cherche à gérer son agoraphobie ; il y l'histoire de Carmen et Terry ; il y a aussi des informations au sujets des deltas et des maisons d'astrologie. C'est un peu discordant au début, mais ça marche.

J'ai surtout aimé le dialect Acadien (celui de la région de Dieppe) qui est utilisé.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal project - read a handful of France Daigle's novels and discover this local (but nationally-rated) postmodern author. "Pas pire" (Not Bad - and yes, very hard to resist using the title as a review - although the title in translation is actually Just Fine) is a mid-career effort, and perhaps the most traditionally written of the ones I have on hand. Daigle uses a collage-like structure, interrupting the two basic narratives - a young couple falling in love, and the author herself fighting agoraphobia after being invited to Bernard Pivot's Bouillon de Culture - with informational pieces on river deltas and astrology, so we're very much geographically between two maze-like structures, and in those invisible geographies, the author-character must navigate. It's good, but nowhere near as maverick a piece of work as her other books, three of which I've completed (below) and another I've started. So yeah. No bad. (In the end, I couldn't resist.)

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for my french in translation class. My teacher assured us that there was a "gem on every page," but although I found a few gems here and there, I was left generally unsatisfied. Perhaps she will convince me otherwise at class today.

[Connor Fraser · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for my Acadian literature class. Very interesting, I hope to read it again one day in English and pick up all the little pieces I missed this first time around.