May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler
A Fiction Review by Alison Manley
May Our Joy Endure is a fascinating novel for our times, a critique of the housing crisis and rising social discord from the view of the ultra-rich who hold the power, and their indignation in the face of common sentiment. Kevin Lambert has written a darkly funny novel, and Donald Winkler translated it beautifully into English. Occasionally I felt it tipped a little too close to softening the images of those who have benefitted from the current mess we’re in, replicated in cities around the globe. Still, Lambert always managed to pull it back, a misstep from the main characters reminding us that the stakes are different at different echelons of society.
“Controversy forces Céline to confront a world she thought she knew, friends she thought she had, and decide what her next course of action will be while trying to hold onto what she thought was true about herself and her role in the world.”
Webuy, a major tech company, has engaged Céline Wachowski, a celebrated architect to design their new headquarters in Montreal. This is a coup for everyone: Montreal, for getting to be the home of such a company, and Céline, after a lifetime of designing beautiful buildings around the world, being a highly respected and sought-after architect, now has the opportunity to build a stunning building in her hometown. However, the land acquired by Webuy included homes, and this sets off a firestorm: protestors object to this land being cleared for a private company’s corporate headquarters, and the fire grows even more when an unflattering article about Céline’s career is published in The New Yorker. The controversy forces Céline to confront a world she thought she knew, friends she thought she had, and decide what her next course of action will be while trying to hold onto what she thought was true about herself and her role in the world.
The narration style and pace of May Our Joy Endure change noticeably depending on which character is at the forefront, mimicking their feelings about an increasingly tense situation. Céline’s anger at being ousted is palpable, but her reactions and plans are dated in a familiar way, the girlboss of a different era. She fought, so why can’t her employees give themselves to the ateliers? This is an old story, of the boss versus the workers, the misunderstood artist against the tastes of the common person. And yet it is fresh and deeply emotional, because of how Lambert plays on these issues in a frame that deeply affects so many of us right now.
The concept of liking May Our Joy Endure is foreign to the kind of novel that it is. It doesn’t ask you to like it. It asks you to think deeply about the norms you hold, the beliefs you have about community and space, and the role of privilege in success. It demands you think about power and how it’s retained, and how the ladder gets pulled up behind people. May Our Joy Endure enraged me, but I know it did its job right.
About the Author
Born in 1992, Kevin Lambert grew up in Chicoutimi, Quebec. May Our Joy Endure won the Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet, and was a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. His second novel, Querelle de Roberval, was acclaimed in Quebec, where it was nominated for four literary prizes; in France, where it was a finalist for the Prix Médicis and Prix Le Monde and won the Prix Sade; and Canada, where it was shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His first novel, You Will Love What You Have Killed, also widely acclaimed, won a prize for the best novel from the Saguenay region and was a finalist for Quebec’s Booksellers’ Prize. Lambert lives in Montreal.
Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation. He lives in Montreal.
About the Reviewer
Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.
Book Details
Publisher : Biblioasis (Sept. 3 2024)
Language : English
Paperback : 224 pages
ISBN-10 : 1771966203
ISBN-13 : 978-1771966207
One of the points of the novel, as stated by the author himself, was to show that humanizing someone you critique is not equivalent to giving them credit or saying that they are right. I don’t think he “softened the image” of the elite, but rather created a well rounded and realistic character and that seems to make some readers uncomfortable because it disrupts the black and white viewpoint that rich = evil with no room for nuance or humanity.
Looking forward to reading this one.