Neighbourhood Watch by Rhonda Mullins (best feel good books txt) 📗

Gaston, on my father’s side, got me lessons. I went to music camp. I was very good. I don’t play as much now, but I love classical music. The sound of the violin seizes the heart, it touches you. It’s my other baby.

I would like to try playing other instruments at some point. I like to explore. I haven’t travelled a lot, but it’s something that appeals to me. I like to explore the food of other countries, languages of other countries. I was intrigued by Russia when I was young. I wanted to learn the language. I lived with a foster family for a while, and they were Haitian, and I loved the culture. I got to the point where I almost understood Creole. So I love discovering new things.

And nature has always fascinated me. My dad’s family is from Gaspésie, and my mother is Indigenous, so I went to camp in Abitibi. And Anaïs would take me to her cottage. I love to be in nature.

I learned to know myself, and I think that’s what got me through. I knew I could determine my own life. I have a spiritual bent. I never really got into drugs or alcohol. There was a little voice inside me that told me, ‘This isn’t your place here.’

R: A little voice is a powerful thing.

G: Yes.

R: The novel came out ten years ago, so how old were you then?

G: Around twenty.

R: How did it affect you?

G: I usually read non-fiction. So when I read it, parts of it, it surprised me. It moved me. It spoke to me. I was emotional. I didn’t expect it. And her note gave me shivers. When she wrote [in the original foreword]:

I wrote the first lines of this story a long time ago, after I collided, body and soul, with Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. With its children, mainly, and I felt an urgent need to tell their stories.

The first writings that grew out of this encounter were the genesis for my feature film Le Ring.

Then other storylines appeared, other childhoods, and Je voudrais qu’on m’efface gradually took shape, inspired by the neighbourhood’s little fighters.

Because they shed new light on the world. Pure and simple. And, since then, that light has clung to my body.

It gives me shivers. Because it, and [her film] The Ring, capture exactly how we lived. How we were truly disadvantaged. How we needed to get out. We were forced to be adults. We didn’t have a childhood. Now that I have my own son, I cherish him. I want to give him everything.

R: The character of Roxane was given a label at school that made things more difficult for her. What was your relationship with school?

G: I struggled a little at school. No real problems, but I had a hard time concentrating. So it was hard, but it was good too, because it was somewhere to go. It got me out of the house. There were some difficulties, but I always wanted to learn. And I had that inner voice that told me to keep going.

R: Is there anything else you wanted to talk about?

G: I just want to congratulate Anaïs on everything she’s done. I am happy that she thought of me for this interview. I recommend everyone read the book. It’s a look at reality, and it’s important. It can help. We need families and we need love. And when I talk about my past, it’s like it liberates me even more.

*Dr. Julien refers to Dr. Gilles Julien, founder of the Dr. Julien Foundation, which offers pediatric care to children living in difficult circumstances, including mind-body therapies such as art and music therapy, mentoring, and medical care.

About the Author and Translator

Named Artist for Peace in 2012, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette has directed a number of feature-length documentaries, which have received many awards, and three fiction features. Her debut novel in French (now translated as Neighbourhood Watch) was made into a film called The Ring (2008). Her second fiction feature, Inch’Allah (2012), received the fipresci Prize in Berlin, and and La déesse des mouches à feu was selected for the Berlin Film Festival. In spring 2021, she will be shooting the feature film Chien Blanc, an adaptation of Romain Gary’s novel White Dog.

She is the author of the travel chronicles Embrasser Yasser Arafat (2011), the children’s book Nos héroïnes (2018), and novels Je voudrais qu’on m’efface (2010) and La femme qui fuit (Prix des libraires du Québec, Grand Prix de la ville de Montréal, Prix France-Québec, a bestseller of the decade 2010-2020), a major critical and popular success, translated as Suzanne.

Rhonda Mullins’s translation of Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award in 2018 and shortlisted for cbc Canada Reads in 2019. And the Birds Rained Down, her 2012 translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was also a Canada Reads Selection and shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She received the 2015 Governor General’s Literary Award for Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s Les héritiers de la mine. Rhonda currently lives in Montreal.

Typeset in Adobe Jenson and Belwe.

Printed at the Coach House on bpNichol Lane in Toronto, Ontario, on Zephyr Antique Laid paper, which was manufactured, acid-free, in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, from second-growth forests. This book was printed with vegetable-based ink on a 1973 Heidelberg kord offset litho press. Its pages were folded on a Baumfolder, gathered by hand, bound on a Sulby Auto-Minabinda, and trimmed on a Polar singleknife cutter.

Translated by Rhonda Mullins

Edited by Alana Wilcox

Cover design by Natalie Olsen

Cover images © Beatrix Boros and Jovana Rikalo / Stocksy

Translator photo by Owen Egan

Coach House Books

80 bpNichol Lane

Toronto ON M5S 3J4

Canada

416 979 2217

800 367 6360

mail@chbooks.com

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*Dr. Julien refers to Dr. Gilles Julien, founder of the Dr. Julien Foundation, which offers pediatric care to children living in difficult circumstances, including