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Thérèse Descary: A Third Career ? |
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Thérèse Descary: A Third Career ? |
by Marie-Pierre Tremblay
June 2001
@deline.web. An electronic address soon to be on everybody's lips and in book reviews on radio and television and in newspapers and magazines. But what exactly is this @deline.web?
lt is Thérèse Descary's* first novel, a four-handed opus written in collaboration with an old friend, Louise Cofsky, from Quebec City. It all started when the two authors got together to work out the characters and breathe life into them. Simone, the mother, is "interpreted" by Louise Cofsky and Adeline, her daughter, is "played" by Thérèse. The plot took shape gradually during the back-and-forth of their Internet correspondance. The resulting book is lively, spontaneous and action-packed. lt keeps the reader in suspense from beginning to end. The story, alternately tough, heartbreaking and cheerful, is about two people who find each other after a ten-year silence.
We visited Thérèse and her husband, Jean-Louis Bertrand, on a gorgeous late-April afternoon at Ruisseau de l'étang, their magnificent property near Mansonville in the Eastern Townships. Seventy-five wooded acres climbing up the side of a mountain full of hare and partridge, fox and deer, crossed by four trout streams swollen by spring run-off... a fabulous view of the mountains... an idyllic scene to set city folk dreaming!
Their life revolves around country activities: the forest to be thinned out, vines to be planted, footbridges to be built, waterfalls to be controlled, terracing to finish, a vegetable garden to be fertilized. The seedlings in the greenhouse are barely in leaf but aiready a jubilant and confident Thérèse sees herself tossing salads. This spring, Jean-Louis was busy boiling sap from the twenty or so maple trees around the house. Before the construction of their lovely post-and-beam home with its cathedral ceiling, they spent their weekends higher up the mountain, in their sugaring house among 3,000 maple trees.
A dozen or so chickens of different breeds and a vigorous rooster will soon be pecking away under the tall pine trees white Bill and Boule, their two cats, lounge about like princes in their tiny heated house.
The days are altogether too short, taken up with manual labour, long walks, reading, weekends with the children and the grandchildren, swimming in the moonlight, mushroom hunts, music, feasts with friends, and writing.
Ever since illness immobilized her for many weeks, Thérèse had entertained the idea of creating an exchange between two writers. Coincidentally, she came across Dostoyevsky's Poor Folk, and she found the format (an exchange of notes between a poor civil servant and a destitute dressmaker) very appealing. The project remained in abeyance until the day she invited three of her college friends over to the house. One of them was Louise Cofsky whom she hadn't seen in several years.
Louise had already published a book. They discussed the possibility of a collaboration... A few weeks later, the project materialized. Over a period of three seasons, "mother" and "daughter" confront each other, admit the inadmissible, detest and love each other with equal passion, and build, day by day, a passionate and compelling world. "As soon as all the elements fell into place, I immediately became Adeline," confided Thérèse. "The writing was relatively easy and the book was accepted by the first publisher we showed it to. That is an encouraging sign." After teaching nursing for ten years and 23 years spent in production, is this the start of a new career for Thérèse? Will there be another book? "One day, maybe... In any case, 1 loved the experience."
But a new project has already come up: a six-month educationai workshop using film, to be held in cooperation with the Canada Youth Program, Cultural Section, for the social integration of youth aged 16 to 35 of Potton Township where she lives.
There will be three successive book launches in mid-June of @deline.web: in Quebec City, Lachine and Mansonville. The book will be available in bookstores as of June 15 ($19.95, 190 pages) and from the publisher Éditions Deslandes, 816 de la Colombière East, Quebec City, OC, GlJ IE3. E-mail address: [email protected]; telephone and fax: (418) 622-4534.
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*Thérèse Descary taught nursing for ten years. The next ten years she spent at the Quebec Department of Education, where she developed and produced audiovisual documents on different subjects for the educationai market from primary up to university levels. After two years as a producer at Radio-Québec, she joined the NFB in 1988 and produced some fifty animation and documentary films, including the three-part Rights from the Heart/Droits au coeur collection - 21 films that won over 50 international awards. Thérèse Descary retired in 1999.
