Les pénitences par Alex Viens

     Before I even start this review, I need to give a shout out to the bookstore where I got it from. Un Livre à Soi is a francophone bookstore in Montreal that I had the luck of wandering into. While I was there, a woman asked if I needed any help and I asked for recommendations for Montrealian authors. She then handed me book after book, giving me summaries in French that I felt very proud of myself for understanding. After she handed me probably six books, she asked for another employee’s recommendations for novels by Montreal writers and that employee gave me several more. While she was giving me recommendations, yet another employee gave me some suggestions. In the end, I ended up with a stack of probably twelve books to sort through. When I made some decisions, I took them to the counter and the first woman said, “Oh, but these aren’t for you right?” and I replied (all of this in French), “Oh, no, they are. I’m trying to practice.” The man behind the counter then said, “Oh, well, since you’re practicing, I’ll give you 10% off.” It was a really beautiful experience so good on Un Livre à Soi for being so welcoming. Such was the genesis of me reading Les pénitences by Alex Viens. Again, I just have to say that I really enjoyed the experience of reading a novel in French and actually getting most of it. It was a refreshing change of pace. 

Alex Viens’ novel focuses on Jules, a young woman visiting her father, Denis, after over a decade of being no contact. A mystery opens the book: after much debate and delay, Jules has brought a box to Denis and we are not told what is in the box. We only know it is something that Jules’ mother, estranged from Denis, was reluctant to give over.

The early part of the book depicts its fair share of qualified tenderness. Denis’ estrangement from his ex and children is apparent and it’s clear that he’s not the healthiest father figure, living in a run-down apartment, alcoholic and foul-mouthed, listening to The Cure records on repeat and complaining about the world. He’s a miserable grump that insists on Jules staying for longer than she really has to. That said, there are some moments where the two connect in fraught gentleness.

At Denis’ insistence, they go to the store to buy booze, where Denis makes a racist comment to the cashier that the cashier passes off as ‘just how Denis is.’ When they get back to the apartment, they share a joint and get high in the washroom. Denis also prepares a meal for Jules—a kind of elevated poverty-pasta dish with lots of sauce. Between all the drinking, though, Jules doesn’t feel hungry and Denis becomes furious that his daughter won’t eat the meal he has so lovingly prepared. He starts to yell, demanding that she finish, making her eat until she vomits in her lap and he gets to swoop in and say how much he always loved taking care of his sick children.

Denis’ aggression comes across as a little bit too much, a cartoonish kind of evil, but it seems more plausible as the book goes on. With increasing frequency, the book flashes back and forth through time. We see how Denis interacted with his two children, Jules and Charlie. In short, it’s a long stream of abusive moments and pitting the family against itself. He is overprotective, refusing to let them out of the house, and demanding that one of them take fault when they misbehave. If they snuck out, Jules and Charlie knew that one of them had to fess up to being the ringleader and take the punishment for them both. It was a breeding ground for resentment, which got even worse when the parents split up and Jules ran away to live with her mom while Charlie remained behind to ‘take care of’ their dad, being subjected to, in Jules’ mind, his continual abuse.

Viens’ storytelling makes for some rich ethical debate. There are wrongs done in every direction. Charlie tries to escape to her mom’s, and Jules invites her to stay, but she goes home to Denis and is forced into a position of having to say that she was gathering information for what she could say in court. Denis is trying to get full custody and so Charlie furnishes him with info only for it to be spun in the other direction where Denis says that if she were to share any of that with the court it would only mean he’d have to increase his alimony payments. The family is continually in a no-win situation.

In the present of the book, Jules’ conflict with her father continues to escalate throughout their night together. As if it were a scene in a horror movie, Denis locks Jules into the apartment after his looming shadow follows her down the hall. He then takes the mysterious box and locks himself in the bathroom. In an attempt to get him out, Jules starts acting out by pouring out his beers, throwing a brick through the television set, and screaming to make him come out and give her the key.

It’s hard to talk about the book in a way that won’t ruin the surprise. Throughout the book, I had an idea of what might be in the box and Viens continues to turn the screw to make you feel the tension of what might happen to it. When, at the end of the book, it’s revealed what’s in the box and then what’s really in the box, it adds an engaging dynamic. It’s the kind of ‘twist’ that makes you rethink the entire family dynamic, which becomes even more violent in the closing pages of the text. It’s a family drama that could easily be transformed into a moody, brooding, complex horror. I am having a hard time resisting revealing the answer to Brad Pitt’s demand to know what’s in the box?

Viens’ depiction of poverty and its impacts is also really compelling. The initial depiction of Denis’ apartment is evocatively developed. Viens describes how everyone watches television really loudly. The passage elaborates on how the thin walls allow you to hear what everybody else is up to. There’s students climaxing together, a sad old man who cries and hits his head against the wall, an upstairs neighbour screaming at her boyfriend to stop. There’s a comment about how the walls offer such little intimacy but how everyone turns a blind eye to one another because police are worse than noise: <<Les murs offrent si peu d’intimité qu’ils font de ces logements les lieux les plus secrets au monde, dans l’indifférence du vivre et laisser vivre, où les gens se mêlent de leurs affaires pour obtenir pareille clémence de la part des autres. Ici, on n’appelle pas la police. On aime encore moins la police que le bruit>> (20). The image of squalor is finely established and sets the tone for the book pretty early on. In another early passage, Viens describes the contents of Denis’ fridge and freezer. Delissio pizzas, ice cream sandwiches, and so on. The passage describes how he takes out his Ziploc bag of pot and how it’s not just the regular Ziplocs, but the ones with the special slider: <<Le sac de Denis en est un avec une glissière en plastique. Ceux qui valent cher, ceux qui rendent jaloux les camarades de classe à l’heure du sandwich au baloney, ceux qu’on a envie de transmettre à ses descendants>> (26). It’s such a telling moment that this little detail on a Ziploc bag becomes a class marker. It reminds me of the opening passage of Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami, in which she talks about how you can tell who grew up poor by asking how many windows there were in their home. I appreciate the way the passage takes this little detail and elevates it to the status of an heirloom. 

I would say that the book has a generally accessible style and has these nice flourishes of description to elevate it. The flashbacks pace the book nicely and add tension to the ‘present’ moment of the text. While the main characters’ evils towards one another are sometimes over the top, there’s enough tenderness to avoid easy answers on the characters, and the final moments of the story offer a compelling reason to re-read the hundred and twenty preceding pages. Memory is hazy. Experiences are subject to revision—though none of the characters, Viens reminds us, have quite the capacity for self-reflection they would need to change their ways. It’s a downer ending, though not in the way you’d anticipate.

Happy reading!