At the crossroads at the end of childhood, Nana faces the hectic passing
of her adolescence and the arrival of new responsibilities as her
grandmother Joséphine approaches her last hours. To calm the storm, Nana
reads the enthralling tales of Josaphat-the-Violin - a returning
character in Tremblay's Plateau-Mont-Royal Chronicles. Three of
Josaphat's fantastical stories contain revelations whose full influence
in her own existence Nana cannot yet measure. In parallel, Nina's
rebellious mother Maria languishes back in Montréal. She is torn between
her desire to gather her young family around her and her deep
uncertainty about being able to care for them properly. Always in search
of what's "best" and what's "elsewhere," will Maria seize the
opportunity "which only hits the door of life once"? However, the most
difficult passage in the lives of Tremblay's characters is that of
time, inexorable, irrevocable, altering and often breaking everything
in its path: the feelings and souls it binds and unbinds, sometimes for
the better, and too often for the worse. Rites of Passage is the awaited
fourth instalment in Michel Tremblay's enthralling and intensely moving
Desrosiers Diaspora series of novels, translated from French by the
critically acclaimed and long-time Tremblay specialist Linda Gaboriau.
Novels Crossing the Continent (2008 Prix du grand public Salon du
livre de Montréal / La Presse), Crossing the City (2009 Prix du grand
public Salon du livre de Montréal / La Presse), and A Crossing of
Hearts, instalments one, two, and three in Tremblay's saga, were all
published by Talonbooks.
