Autorentext

Gisèle Villeneuve is a Montréal-born, Calgary-based writer who blends French and English in a unique bi-langue style. Her work explores the interplay of languages and genres. Titles include the award-winning Rising Abruptly, Visiting Elizabeth, and Et tu seras happé par l'horizon.

Klappentext

A notable contribution to Far Ouest literature, these nine short stories evoke the prairie epicurean and sweeten the sometimes bitter bilingual tongue in Western Canada. Villeneuve celebrates untranslatable moments of complete understanding across culture, age, time, and planes of existence. Four initial narratives "speak to" four matching, intersecting narratives, followed by a postface, "And What If You Burned My Bilingual Toast." A blustery horse trader from Montana shares tall tales in a diner in Panorama, Saskatchewan. A young girl trains herself to hold her breath underwater. Four climbers emerge from a day lost at Mystic Canyon. An unnamed narrator grapples with the death of his Czech parents. This collection dishes up tales of peaceful coexistence between languages, foreign and familiar lands, myth and reality, writing and reading, air and water, fame and obscurity, exile and home. Bohemian and delicious, Toast for Two Tongues invites readers back for second helpings.

Story Synopses

Bilingual Toast. In the eponymous long story, the bilingual toast on the menu of a Saskatchewan diner motivates a Montana horse dealer to launch into a tall tale about fame and his encounter with a leaping road monk.

A Winter of Water Experiments. In an isolated lake community, an asthmatic swimmer seeks to conquer her fear of the deep by teaching herself to breathe underwater.

Stonescents. In a nightly ritual, an old woman celebrates the recovery of her sense of smell by visiting a canyon where the rocks release the wondrous odours of ancient beginnings.

Caught on That Bridge. Hesitating between East and West, between home and exile, a young Czech, vivisector of flies, ponders the koan of his existence.

The Intersecting stories:

Montana. A Calgary man goes to Montana to read.

Sitter and Boyfriend. In the Québec countryside, a girl in her bathtub transforms disobedience into initiative.

At Your Own Risk. Safe in a diner at the edge of Mystic Canyon, climbers cling to intermittent recall of their elusive sorties in a maze of boulders.

Verre de Bohême. Having crossed his bridge, the vivisector of flies visits his parents' destroyed estate outside Prague.

Postface.

The Bi-langue Project (unfinished): And What If You Burned My Bilingual Toast. The ninth and final story belongs to a poète de l'oralité who binds all the intersecting voices together.