LES CACHETTES: The Hiding Places

WITH AN AIR OF GEORGES SIMENON AND RÉJEAN DUCHARME, THE HIDING PLACES IS A STRANGELY ATMOSPHERIC NOVEL ABOUT THE PLIGHT OF A TROUBLING YET ENDEARING YOUNG GIRL.

When eight-year-old Claude Kérouac goes missing, it takes 48 hours for her family to notice she's gone. Eventually the police are called, and the officers arrive to find a chaotic, broken home. They soon see that in the Kérouac family, answers are elusive and the truth is always slipping through their fingers. From the place where she is hiding, Claude confesses her secrets to an unsympathetic psychologist. All too lucidly and candidly for her age, and sometimes cruelly, she narrates her version of a dark family saga.

EXCERPT
The Dog wasn't my dog, but it was always by my side, so they called it “Claude's Dog.” He would always lie down in our bed, beside Richard and me, or in the little hideouts I found for myself in the house. My mother calls them the dens of a wild child. Before, she used to say it with a smile, but now she doesn't know. Now when she talks about my little hiding places, she shakes her head and says “I don't know.” She has secrets too, and those are like hiding places. She keeps a crib in her bedroom. Everyone knows she's not going to have any more children. Candide says she's holding onto it to give it to her daughters when they have children of their own. I think there's more to it. Once I took her by surprise. She was sitting by the crib, singing a lullaby. I can't be sure, but I think she was crying. Children give grief to mothers and daughters. Grief comes from a place of love.

Guy Lalancette has taught French and drama as well as penning several novels including Les yeux du père
(2011, shortlisted for the France-Quebec Award), Un amour empoulaillé (2004, shortlisted for the Governor
General's Award and France- Quebec Award), La conscience d'Éliah (2009, shortlisted for the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie Award) and Le bruit que fait la mort en tombant (2011).