Some Maintenance Required

 

Some Maintenance Required / Marie-Renée Lavoie
Toronto: Anansi, 2022, c2018.
272 p.

I greatly enjoyed Lavoie's two books about a "boring wife" in the past, so when this one arrived in my library recently I snapped it up. It's a standalone, and less slapstick than the previous series. But while it's a more serious look at work, coming of age, and family dynamics, it also has its share of humour. 

It's 1993 and Laurie is at that age where she has to decide what to do with her life. She's attending college but also working , first at a bakery, then a restaurant (her job interview there is quite amusing), and a bingo hall. Her mother works as a parking lot attendant and has made her tiny booth homey. Her father is a mechanic and she visits him at his shop, where she disapproves of the sexist calendars hung up, and where she meets a young man from the rich part of town and a romance slowly begins, giving Laurie a glimpse of a different kind of life.

Laurie also looks after her young neighbour, a scraggly, neglected child who really needs the stable influence of Laurie's family. While her mother is the backbone of the family there comes a point when she is the one needing "some maintenance". The story shows how everyone needs support in life, and how challenges arise that can be met with the help of others. Despite this, nothing feels sappy or sentimental here, it's rough, emotional taxing at times, but ultimately hopeful. 

I enjoyed the sarcasm and some of the set pieces in this story; they made me laugh but also touched me. And I don't think I've read anything lately that engages with work in the way that this book does. The characters spend a lot of their time at work, as people do, and that work defines them and shapes their experiences. I recognized some aspects of Laurie's jobs in the restaurant business from my own few years working in a deli, at about the same stage of life as she's in - it feels unusual to have jobs be a part of a novel in this way. So often a character just floats along and does stuff that isn't affected by income or job schedules. This book feels very life-like in its everyday acceptance that work  - and the finding of work - is a major part of life. I love that it also highlighted how work experiences can also be hilarious at times. 

But the characters are the key here, and this family was the heart of the book. Everything flowed from the relationships between all three of them. I really liked this one, and look forward to more by Lavoie.

A Boring Wife Settles the Score

 

A Boring Wife Settles the Score / Marie-Renée Lavoie
trans. from the French by Arielle Aaronson
TO: Anansi, c2021.
299 p.

I grabbed this book when it arrived in my library -- well, I'd put a hold on it -- since I really enjoyed the first book about Diane and her middle aged divorce, Autopsy of a Boring Wife. 

In this book, Diane is now settling into her newly single life, living alongside her best friend Claudine in a duplex they've bought. Diane finds herself a new job as a kindergarten assistant, and bumps into Guy, the hunky contractor who saw the damage she did to her marital home in the first book. 

She finds that she's kind of a natural at this kindergarten wrangling (lots of opportunity for humour there) even though it's exhausting. Her descriptions of the children and especially their parents is slightly snarky and very amusing. 

And she starts a fling with Guy after many hilarious bumps in the road (one of them being that Claudine's teenage daughter Adele barges in on them in the kitchen just as things are promising to evolve...but Diane gets back at her by surreptitiously sticking a religious badge to her knapsack as she heads off to school a few days later).

There is a lot of angst about her 50th birthday which is coming right up -- and this is the same thing I found odd about the first book. The way that Diane and Claudine talk, and the emphasis on being old which runs throughout this series, is discombobulating when you realize she's only just turning 50. Umm, that's not over the hill or out to pasture yet. 

Just like the first book, this one has lots of musings about middle-aged experiences and how they differ for men and women - from work to parenting to dating again. Diane finds some resolution to her feelings about her ex-husband here, too, which is satisfying for the reader. What I really enjoy about these books is the constant presence of humour, whether that's laughing at themselves or the situational humour that arises naturally; it's kind of like stand-up in the sense of finding what is funny about everyday life. Sometimes Quebec literature can be a bit grim, so I especially enjoyed this book. It's nice to read about a woman surviving adversity and laughing about things while doing so.

If you enjoyed the first book too, you'll definitely want to read this one. You don't have to have read the first one to enjoy this book, but it's a lot of fun if you do read both. This was a great way to start off this year's Women in Translation reading; laughing aloud while reading is always good!

Autopsy of a Boring Wife

Autopsy of a Boring Wife / Marie-Renée Lavoie
 translated from the French by Arielle Aronson
Toronto: Anansi Press, c2019. 
280 p.

Forty-eight year old Diane has just found out that her husband is leaving her for a younger woman, because, as he says, she is boring.

But Diane doesn’t feel boring. And as she deals with her new status in life, she proves that she really isn't -- perhaps it was just the settled marriage that was boring. Alongside her best friend Claudine, she explores what it means to be suddenly single after a 25 year marriage. This includes lengthy discussions of the relative attractiveness of middle aged women and men, the state of marriage as an institution, friendship, motherhood, and lawn care.

Yes, lawn care. Among the more serious issues there is a lot of humour in this book. Diane’s wry observations and the situations she finds herself in are very entertainingly told. There’s ribald humour that middle aged people will appreciate; there will be times when you laugh, and times when you cringe while reading this. From making bad decisions about home renovation to crushing on an office mate, Diane experiences a wide range of emotional responses to her new reality.

From shock and wanting to hide out, to not knowing what to do with herself, to starting up all sorts of projects recommended by her friend Claudine, Diane tries numerous things to recover from this trauma. Meanwhile her ex just floats along into a new comfortable life with a new and younger woman willing to take care of him. This book really outlines the experience of midlife divorce, and how it differs for men and women, or for the left and the leaving. 

The emotional journey that she's on carries her through a year of adjustments, some effective and some a little ill-judged. And in the end she finds a new way of living, in a final chapter that feels a little pat or saccharine in comparison with the rest of the book. But it does tie up some loose ends and leave the reader satisfied that Diane is going to be okay, that there is hope for a happy-ever-after even after such an upheaval. 

This book is referred to as a "Quebecois Bridget Jones" in its publisher's blurb, but I don't think that's quite accurate. To me, it is more reminiscent of other Quebec novels such as Colleen Curran’s Something Drastic – another tale of women finding their way after relationships gone bad, told with subdued hilarity. If you appreciate entertaining women’s writing with a French sensibility, this story might be just the one you’re looking for.