Vanessa Macleod oscillates between ten and twelve years old when she made the "professional monitoring" of events that will disrupt her and her family. She lives with her parents, surrounded by her maternal grandparents and paternal aunt of Edna, her mother's sister. Early last century to Manawaka suburb of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The stage is set: the home of his parents and "Brick House" where the sweet older grandmother Agnes, and the terrifying grandfather Timothy Connor, her husband. From the first chronic Great Depression is rampant. Vanessa's father, Ewen, is a doctor, her mother, Beth, a nurse, is expecting a second child. Every Sunday evening, all three share the family meal with the parents of Beth, each to support the rivalry between the Connor Macleod and vice versa. That evening, the atmosphere is tense Ewen, selected from "Mr. Pearl. He is dying of pneumonia. [...] "Will not be present, which annoys grandfather Timothy ruthlessly rooted in the principles purists of the time. Arrives unexpectedly, Uncle Dan, "the brother of a grandfather." Nice man but failed, drunken merry bachelor, he raises horses and sells them without much success. He begs for money to Timothy, which exceeded, accuses his brother of the worst evils of the world and puts it at the door ...
Thus a column to another, Vanessa observes the adults to whom she not understand much. His intelligent criticism was soon discovered that "it was absurd to try to hide: the best hiding place was to stand quietly sitting in front of everyone. What she will do during the eight stories she recounts. Can we say that Vanessa is a girl privileged to have lived during this murky period, so rewarding? It has the leisure to stroll in the countryside shaded by trees along the rivers, share a strange night at a lake with one of his cousins. She tasted the air of freedom that did not know the women of his family. The characters, because characters are unreal sometimes, how devious in their actions, she sees him learn to grow, to measure the proportion of true and false. Even if unspoken insidious clutter the existential journey of Vanessa, she guesses that humans, as adults, are not always masters of their destiny. Not that it will be better later on his own when, teenager, secrets of the brick house nestled in unusual places, revealing to him that life is neither smooth nor soft like a silk ... The inevitable death that threatens her grandparents for her remains a mystery, a sort of fate against which she can not, do not particularly up.
The new eponymous terms with the death of his father as a result of pneumonia, is one of the most moving of the collection. For the first time, Vanessa realizes that this represents the loss of a loved one. She says she was twelve years old when his father dies. It "bordered on [...] quarantine. It crosses a crisis of rebellion against his family and especially against Noreen, a young woman a little witch, that is their right. Vanessa tries to break the conspiracy of silence, submission inexplicable each other, without really succeeding. Only fictional stories inspired by the Bible, she writes in a notebook schoolgirl, help to stay afloat against the incomprehension of his. One afternoon, she had questioned his father about the death of his brother during the Great War. His answer remains enigmatic, it will be years before the riddle is solved. A letter and a photo hidden in a drawer. Another novel, The horses of the night, we were particularly affected . Chris teenage cousin Vanessa, reside at home for three years to continue his studies. It carries with it the dreams that eventually the stunning defeat ... Thus, the time which affects everyone, disclose many secrets, death will not be missing the appointment of the elderly. When Vanessa returns one last time at the brick house, she has forty years of age his father when he died. We feel that all small drifts were forgiven, the sins washed away in the humble headstone.
Through these eight texts, we see what will become the great writer Margaret Laurence. Vanessa does focus does not mirror in a place where multiplied the childhood memories of a girl who is none other than the author of these stories? It gives the reader the pleasure of discovering a major writer, intellectual mentor of Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, to name a few. Read also how to capture beings of that time, for social and religious reasons, restricted their aspirations for a semblance of life he had to accept the risk of sinking into madness, as Chris, if unconventional to be content rejects the existence ...
A bird in home Margaret Laurence
Translated from English (Canada) by Christine Klein-Lataud
Alto Publishing / Éditions Nota bene, Québec, 2010, 287 pages
Dominique Blondeau - dominblondeau@yahoo.fr 
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