Where dogs bark with their tails : a novel / Estelle-Sarah Bulle ; translated from the French by Julia Grawemeyer.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780374289096
- Physical Description: 288 pages ; 22 cm
- Edition: First American edition.
- Publisher: New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022.
- Copyright: ©2022
Content descriptions
General Note: | "Originally published in French in 2018 by É́ditions Liana Levi, France, as Là où les chiens aboient par la queue"--Title page verso. |
Search for related items by subject
Subject: | Racially mixed women > Fiction. Families > History > Fiction. Aunts > Fiction. Intergenerational relations > Fiction Paris (France) > Fiction. Guadeloupe > Social life and customs > Fiction. |
Genre: | Historical fiction. |
Available copies
- 4 of 4 copies available at BC Interlibrary Connect. (Show)
- 1 of 1 copy available at Castlegar Public Library.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 4 total copies.
Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Castlegar Public Library | FIC BUL (Text) | 35146002279024 | Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2022 July #1
After her mother dies of sadness, Antoine leaves behind the countryside of Guadeloupe and its spirits with little more than a parasol. Cunning and sharp even as a teenager, she charms her way into the capital city of Pointe-à -Pitre with a dream to start a shop just like her mother's. But though her passion for business remains steady, her personal relationships are tumultuous, even with Lucinde, her younger sister. After marriage, Lucinde finds success in creating dresses for wealthy, white clients, irritating her husband and further fracturing her identity between Black and white. Meanwhile, Petit-Frère, their little brother, wrestles with his love for reading alongside his despair in never knowing his mother. Throughout the novel, the Ezechiel siblings recount their family history and contrasting childhoods to Petit-Frère's daughter, who was born in France and desires a deeper connection to her métis identity. In dreamy, sprawling prose translated from French, Bulle masterfully crafts a twentieth-century diaspora at the intersection of racism, colonialism, and grief. A powerful story of family and belonging for historical-fiction readers. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2022 May #1
Three siblings are buffeted by family drama, culture, and history in Guadeloupe. Bulle's debut novel is framed around a young woman seeking to understand the lives of her father, known to his family as Petit-Frère, and her aunts, Lucinde and Antoine. Some of the disruption is a function of colonization: France's possession of the Antillean archipelago is at once a source of social identity (Antoine long aspired to own a shop in Paris) and division, leading to a violent clash between police and citizens in 1967. There are cultural challenges too, as the siblings are mixed-race, complicating their status in a closed and class-conscious society. And then there is simple family dramaâin alternating narratives, the siblings debate the causes of various incidents in Rashomon-like fashion. (Antoine's urge to leave her impoverished home at 16 was either rash or necessary, depending on who's talking.) Antoine calls the place "this little island where immorality reigns," and the novel's title refers to the backwardness of the family's hometown. Still, Bulle conveys a deep sense of affection for the place in all its frustrations; translator Grawemeyer includes thoughtful, unobtrusive footnotes about Guadeloupean history and folklore while preserving much of the flavor of the original French and Creole in the text itself. So the novel's flaws are largely matters of structure: Splitting the voices across the three siblings and Petit-Frère's daughter diffuses the narrative, which at its heart is about Antoine's struggles. But Antoine's thread feels clipped; there's a truncated subplot involving diamond smuggling and moments of magical realism that pass without much development, while Lucinde's stints as a clothing designer or Petit-Frère's as a jazz-loving soldier get shorter shrift. As a portrait of a nation that's received little attention, it's fascinating, but as a story it struggles to find its footing. A universal story about sibling tensions infused with plenty of history. Copyright Kirkus 2022 Kirkus/BPI Communications. All rights reserved. - PW Annex Reviews : Publishers Weekly Annex Reviews
The Antillean people of Guadaloupe take center stage in Bulle's promising debut. In alternating chapters beginning in the 1940s, three biracial adult siblings relate their family's story to a member of the younger generation against the backdrop of their homeland's convoluted history. Antoine Ezechiel, the fiercely independent eldest daughter, has a shrewd business sense. Lucinde is an expert seamstress who aspires to climb into the middle class and beyond. Petit-Frere, the youngest, has been robbed by circumstance of the education he craves. After their mother dies, Antoine, at 16, leaves her poor village for Pointe-a-Pitre, where she moves in with a cousin and finds work before traveling around the Caribbean. Guadaloupe can't hold the siblings for long, and each of them winds up in Paris by the 1960s: Antoine, drawn by business opportunities; Lucinde, by fashion and celebrity; and Petit-Frere, fresh from an army post in Germany, by the Sorbonne and left-wing activism. Though the story tends to ramble, there is much conflict and loss as fights for workers' rights and self-determination heat up, and the many characters remain distinct and memorable thanks to Grawemeyer's finely tuned translation. This ambitious work heralds a welcome new voice.
Copyright 2022 Publishers Weekly Annex.(July)