The Black Notebook

In the heart of the Latin Quarter, meeting place of marginal characters of all sorts, C line Poulin works the night shift at a cheap and popular restaurant, Le S lect, serving hamburger platters and spaghetti and meatballs to student misfits, transvestites, hookers and queens from the Main--Montreal's disreputable Boulevard Saint-Laurent. Hanging out with a theatre company in her off hours, C line sees opening before her a world where it is not only possible, but even desirable to pretend. When the director offers her a role in The Trojan Women, the die is cast. The Black Notebook is C line's diary, her account of her trials and tribulations, her expectations and her cruel disappointments, because this young waitress at Le S lect has her own dramatic story to tell, even if only to herself: C line is a midget. From the theatre of Euripides to the theatre of Montreal's Main, Michel Tremblay--our Balzac--creates and gives voice to some astonishing new characters in this first of a new series of novels. For the characters of The Black Notebook, the first in this trilogy, life is a comedy that barely conceals the cruel and pitiless tragedy of the everyday. With a transcendent eloquence and compassion, Michel Tremblay celebrates how it is possible for C line to embrace her difference and to flourish--despite that difference, or perhaps, because of it.