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Alright so I finally gave myself a kick in the you know what and I started to read Pélagie (version française). Can you say “challenge”? Holy crap. I am a francophone from New Brunswick and I can barely understand what the woman wrote! The thing is that I am not Acadian. Newsflash! Not all francophones from New Brunswick are Acadian. I am Brayonne. In fact, the francophones of New Brunswick all have different accents and customs depending on which region they are from and with whom their part of the province borders. If you Google my beautiful province, you will see that we share a border with the Americans, Quebecers and Nova Scotians. Anyways, my point is that I am struggling with Antonine’s writing and I have had to re-read the first chapter more than once and so I feel utterly stupid. Man do I ever miss my hot vampire romance novels. Those are a walk in the park! Then again, that’s the whole point of this journey:  to challenge myself literally by getting out of my reading comfort zone. Oh I’m out of the zone alright. In fact, I’m so far out I feel like I landed on Mars!

Ok so maybe I am being a bit dramatic. Maybe I should explain to you exactly what I find challenging about this first chapter. Number one:  It confused the hell out of me because I wasn’t sure where the characters were in time. I couldn’t figure out whether it was the past (pre-deportation) or the present (deportation to the U.S.) or the future (post-deportation) because she seems to go back and forth in all three time periods. Number two: Who the hell are these people in the cart with her? I think some of them are her children but I can’t be sure. Then there is this old man and an orphan child they seem to have picked up along the way but I am completely unsure because they talk to each other like they know each other. Now, is this the Maritimer way of being overly friendly with strangers or do they actually know each other? Who knows! Number three: she keeps saying Hi! throughout and I can’t figure out if she is saying hello or if it’s a sound like Hi ho hi ho hi ho ho ho ho (ok great, now I have that damn snow white song in my head!).

I’m completely embarrassed to say that I am from the same province as this author and unable to understand what she is saying. It is also extremely frustrating because I should know much more about the deportation of Acadians and I am reading in fear that I am missing something because I don’t know or remember the history like I feel I should. Argh! What was I thinking!? I should have started this challenge with another book! Great, now I can’t wait for Chapter 2…