Modern Quebec fairy tale ‘Sing, Nightingale’ from Marie-Hélène Poitras turns patriarchal conventions on their head

“Sing, Nightingale,” the new novel by Montreal writer Marie Hélène Poitras (first published in Quebec in 2021, now in a clear, uncluttered translation from the French by Rhonda Mullins), begins by drawing attention to its own artifice: “Under the clouds, the village of Noirax looks like a little theatre. Cardboard sets, a stage on which to deliver lines, and puppets awaiting a hand to bring them to life, send them scurrying right to left, then left to right, until they disappear into the wings.”

It’s a bold approach and one which pays off immediately: in “Sing, Nightingale,” the reader is immersed, from the outset, in a world of shifting truths and unreliable history, of magical events and quotidian concerns. It is not, however, the typical sort of immersion, where one slips into a comfortably realistic simulation of reality; this is something deeper and darker, and more primal.

“Sing, Nightingale” is a fairy tale with Gothic overtones, the events taking place in the cardboard puppet theatre of the village of Noirax, in the dark of the surrounding forest and on the nearby estate, Malmaison (that foregrounding of artifice is evident with a quick translation of the estate’s name: “bad house” is exactly the stuff of fairy tales).

The estate is the home of the father, most recent in a long line of fathers; he lives alone, the house aging and crumbling around him. He seems to be respected in the village — or thinks he is — and has ongoing relationships, of a sort, with the people around him. His life, however, is rattled by the return of his son, Jeanty, who is coming home in the wake of a disastrous relationship, and the arrival of Alienor, a bewitching young woman who promises to bring the estate back to life.

It wouldn’t be much of a fairy tale, though, if things went as planned. Suffice it to say, the father isn’t all he appears to be, Jeanty returns with secrets of his own and Alienor has her own agenda, one which will strike at the very heart of Malmaison and the questions which surround it overturning the patriarchal conventions of the tale itself (including what has happened to the women of Malmaison, the mothers and wives and mistresses, and to their children).

Because “Sing, Nightingale” is a fairy tale it requires reading as such. It is best to abandon one’s reflexive search for such modernist ideas as character development and explicit themes. “Sing, Nightingale” is a novel of subversive delights, a timeless story (literally; there are both cars and hazelnut sellers in the village) that gathers its strength from our shared, archetypal memories.

Poitras’ work serves as a tuning fork; we feel its vibrations within us. We recognize the frequency, buried deeply in our psyches. It is a story that is immediately familiar, yet utterly unique, unfolding with the ineffable logic of a dream, of a memory of events which we have not yet experienced.

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