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list price: $16.95
edition:Paperback
also available: eBook
category: Drama
published: Nov 2016
ISBN:9781772010237
publisher: Talonbooks

Yours Forever, Marie-Lou

by Michel Tremblay, translated by Linda Gaboriau, introduction by Diana Leblanc

tagged: canadian
Description

They say hindsight is 20/20. They’re not wrong.

 

Ten years after their parents’ death in a car accident, now-grown sisters Carmen and Manon are together for one of their rare visits – and one of them is finally ready to confront their shared tragedy.

 

Carmen is a boisterous country-and-western singer who has left her home, and all her past, in the dust. Manon lives a more sheltered life, closely aligned with the traditions of religious Quebec, which are now – in the mid-1970s – only beginning to come apart at the seams. Carmen is convinced it’s time for Manon to end the years of mourning, while Manon is insulted that Carmen seems to have responded so unfeelingly to such a horror.

 

Each sister has kept the memory of their parents alive in her own way. In fact – here they are, in living memory: Marie-Louise and Lèopold, the girls’ parents, are on stage simultaneously. Just beyond the ken of their daughters, they live out their final day.

 

As the two daughters struggle to reconcile the events preceding the fatal crash, and as their parents play out the culmination of their sodden marriage, we discover there is more to the memory of that fatal day than meets the eye. And yet, can the blame really be laid at the feet of one person? Or can a whole socio-cultural paradigm that twist its subjects into unbearable contortions and trap them in fear and submission, be at fault?

Cast of 3 women and 1 man.

About the Authors

Michel Tremblay

A major figure in Québec literature, Michel Tremblay has built an impressive body of work as a playwright, novelist, translator, and screenwriter. To date Tremblay’s complete works include twenty-nine plays, thirty-one novels, six collections of autobiographical stories, a collection of tales, seven screenplays, forty-six translations and adaptations of works by foreign writers, nine plays and twelve stories printed in diverse publications, an opera libretto, a song cycle, a Symphonic Christmas Tale, and two musicals. His work has won numerous awards and accolades; his plays have been published and translated into forty languages and have garnered critical acclaim in Canada, the United States, and more than fifty countries around the world.

Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montréal. Her translations of plays by Québec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She is the founding ­director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Gaboriau has won the Governor General’s Award for Translation three times: in 1996 for Daniel Danis’s Stone and Ashes, in 2010 for Wajdi Mouawad’s Forests, and in 2019 for Wajdi Mouawad’s Birds of a Kind. She is a member of the Order of Canada and an Officer of the Ordre national du Québec.

Diana Leblanc is an actor and director, as well as a founding member of Soulpepper Theatre.
Contributor Notes

Michel Tremblay is one of Quebec’s most important writers. Born in 1942 of mixed French, American, and Cree ancestry, he has been awarded the Governor General’s Award for the Arts, the Prix David from Québec, and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in France. He divides his time between Montréal and Key West, producing at least one new play or novel every year; there are more than 30 of each, and all are beloved. He is perhaps most well known for his play Les Belles-Soeurs and his novel The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant.

Linda Gaboriau, an award-winning literary translator, provides a new translation of this well-loved play. Gaboriau’s translations of plays by Quebec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad, and she has twice won the Governor General’s Award for Translation. She lives in Montreal.

Editorial Reviews

“A script that has earned its place in the Canadian theater canon.” – Toronto Star


“[The parents’] fight over peanut butter and toast slowly escalates into a harrowing excavation of the true causes of their deep unhappiness – which are cruelly rooted in the domination of the Catholic Church [and] the exploitation of the Quebec working class.” – Globe and Mail

 


“A quartet, with two conversations, in two different decades, happening at once.” – Theatromania


“Its themes – Catholicism, sexuality, domestic abuse, and the legacy of a tragic death – are universal.”
NOW Toronto


“One of Quebec playwright Michel Tremblay’s greatest works, the Long Day’s Journey into Night of his oeuvre.” – Globe and Mail

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