Description :
The Madonna of St. Denis Bar-BQ is a true account of a parent-child relationshisp, beginning with the details of the death of the author's mother, Belle-Moue, and tracing her history back, chapter by chapter, to her birth some decades earlier. It reads like modern-day fiction, scored with factual information. The theme is universal. Authors from different cultural backgrounds have written about the life and death of a parent: Simone de Beauvoir and Michael Ignatieff, among others, have recounted the mother-to-daughter, mother-to-son legacy.The setting for the book is régional: it is the life story of a Québécoise, in la belle province, from 1988 back to 1909. The plot includes a distinct dimension - veritable influence of religion and government on 20th century French Canada and on women in particular - a subject about which Huguette O'Neil writes with convincing authority.
Extract:
Paul and Bertha are in love. Lost in each other, they will live as one, night and day, for the rest of their married life. The melding process has begun. The attachment they have for each other will tie them to the bars of the matrimonial cage, although unlocked, for life. The cage in question is the passive dependent relationship established by Bertha and from which Paul has no means of escape. Bertha will live life stuch to him like a parasite, until she sucks him dry. (Page 78).
Critics:
"O'Neil unique writing style which includes asides and private conversations with her dead mother, is brilliantly executed and a tribute to Suzanne O'Connor talents as a translator. It would be no small task to translate the nuances or capture the emotions that O'Neil so generously shares." (Sharon McCully - The Sherbrooke Record).
"Huguette O'Neil analyzes her mother and her grand-mother and contemplates the emotional leftovers of an era in which "little Bertha's mother, extremely pregnant, found herself being asked by her confessor if she was doing anything to obstruct the course of nature and warned about committing such a mortal sin." Bertha, says O'Neil, was left with an innate fear of living." (Joan Cadham - Montreal Review of Books - The Globe and Mail)
