Okay this is a bit of a hard book. I think part of this is a “fool me once, twice, three times” moment. Audiobooks don’t fit all that well into my reading style, and this book would have been better read, not listened to.
Ce qu’on respire sur Tatouine is about a Montréalais man with cystic fibrosis. His health has completely shaped his life and the trajectory of his life. In particular, parallels are often drawn between him and his sister - where a life with and without cystic fibrosis are worlds apart. And like the drip of his hospital fluids, the role of his health is a pervasive part of the novel — no part of his life is truly untouched by it. His life attempts to be normal, but each time he catches some momentum his illness derails it.
The prose isn’t particularly shining, nor is the story itself. In a country with such diverse literature, this novel tells a story about an ordinary person and doesn’t do much with it. It’s chock full of cultural references, but only the ones that the widest possible audience would recognise. Star Wars references every five minutes, very predictably, get boring after a while.
Tatouine did have some nice moments, but they were lost in a sea of rather unimaginative prose. This is partly due to the medium - this is on me for listening to an audiobook instead of an ebook. Much of the book’s impact is lost in this format, and though there are some nice poetic moments they’re sparse and devoid of impact. On another level, I think this impact was also lost in the translation from French to English. Much of this just seeks to magnify the lack of excitment in the book. Perhaps this was the intent of the author? But the French reviews speak so glowingly of the novel that I cannot believe what they read is the equivalent of what I listened to.
Read for One eRead Canada — the Toronto Public Library graciously had unlimited copies of the audiobook.
2/5
Written 27 April 2023 Adapted from my review on Goodreads.