Novel
The Plouffe Family
Les Plouffe
Roger Lemelin · 1948
Synopsis
Lower Town, Quebec City, summer 1938. In the Plouffe household, a working-class family, the father, Théophile, a typographer and former cycling champion, rails against the English. Napoléon, the eldest, collects photographs of sportsmen. Ovide, passionate about opera, hesitates between the religious life and Rita Toulouse, an office employee at the shoe factory where he works. Guillaume throws the ball so well that a Baptist pastor from Cincinnati, mad about baseball, wants to have him play. Cécile, forty, still receives her former sweetheart, Onésime, who is married to another.
Context
The author's second novel, written thanks to an American grant, the book appeared in Quebec, from Bélisle, in 1948; Mary Finch's English translation followed in Toronto in 1950, and the French edition from Flammarion in 1955. Radio-Canada made a radio serial of it in 1952, then La famille Plouffe on television, from 1953 to 1959, also broadcast in English. Gilles Carle made a film of it in 1981, from a screenplay written with the author; Denys Arcand did the same, in 1984, with the sequel to the novel.
Who it is for
A novel of more than four hundred pages, made of scenes and dialogue; it reads better if one knows the Catholic Quebec of before the war.
Prizes and reception
An immediate success on television according to the American broadcasting museum; Gilles Carle's film won seven Genie Awards.
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