review of Clare Latremouille's The Desmond Road Book of the Dead

by Laurie Anne Fuhr
(originally published in filling Station)

The Desmond Road Book of the Dead
By Clare Latremouille

What if you decide to write a book, your first book, about several generations of women in your family at different stages of their lives so they won’t be so easily forgotten? To be true to this idea you will have to include yourself, at least sometimes. Okay.

You will go back and forth in time and between speakers, give dates where there are shifts, but confuse the reader slightly as they notice similarities between the voices of each generation because they are related and made of one another, forward and back in time, while horses get wheels or cars grow legs around them.

You will describe the most beautiful and most painful moments of each life from the perspective of each life, choosing the moments how memory chooses – some obviously significant, others significant to memory in a way less known to the mind.

Children will describe in a sparse, childlike, poetic prose and grandmothers will describe in sparse, childlike, but omniscient prose and adults will be allowed to achieve narrative when they are self-conscious. Because it’s likely more like how minds work.

And you say hey, why not see if I can’t just keep it real despite the fact that every now and then I will see about dropping in some lines of poetry that could just rival some of the best lyric poets writing?

You will be as honest as possible, no matter how painful the details; when someone cries out with the pain of dying, child or old woman, their voices will be heard in this book, and when someone laughs, no matter the reason, their laughter will also be heard.

As you write, you don’t care what anyone thinks of your subject matter, or what the current writing trends are, because this is a book you have to write, and you’re just going to have to write your heart out, because you got that heart from the people you’re writing about.

When you’re finished, there’s a good bet you have written The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, a first novel by Clare Latremouille and the first offering from Ottawa’s Chaudiere Books.