Canadian author Stéfanie Clermont delivers in her debut novel, The Music Game, pushing the boundaries of narrative structure through intimate portrayals of young adulthood. Originally written in French, the English version was translated by JC Sutcliffe and released on Feb. 15.
Clermont brings readers on a journey through the lives of three young women — Céline, Sabrina and Julie — providing a first-hand account of how the passage of time and important life events inform their decisions, relationships and mental health. The book is divided into five parts and interweaves between the women’s narratives, briefly living in their internal monologues, and integral and innocuous moments.
The novel’s main themes are apparent in the opening passages of part two, which consist of musings on fleeting connections with others. Particularly, the seemingly transcendent ones that have the potential to revitalize us, save us from ourselves, and destroy us in the process. Through these connections we learn to live again, seeing worth in vulnerability. But time goes by, separating us from those we love and prompting us to start over with someone new.
Time is a constant in all of these joyous yet tumultuous moments, playing the ultimate hand in all of our trajectories. Clermont prompts us to reckon with our past, heal from our pain, learn from our experiences and hopefully come to a point of acceptance.
There are also many shifts in location throughout the book, with stories taking place in either Ottawa, Montreal or California. Having lived in the first two, Clermont is able to craft rich descriptions of these settings, highlighting street corners and specific landmarks that bring joy to locals of the area. Clermont also doesn’t shy away from intimate topics such as the transition from adolescence to adulthood, sexual assault, gender and sexual identitiy, politcal activism, growing apart from loved ones and healing from pain.
I found myself often having to reread passages and chapters to understand the context or waiting for the narrator to be addressed to know who I was reading about. This takes away from the story’s emotional weight as we forget about essential moments that inform the decisions characters make later on. It can be hard to truly get a grasp on how these moments connect to make the person we come to know at the end of the novel. In this regard, the story would have benefited from a more cohesive structure.
Despite these small vignettes, Clermont is still able to craft touching moments, creating a rich interior for her characters in a few words. Similar to the extremely successful Irish-millennial author Sally Rooney, she portrays the complex feelings and emotions of her characters in simple terms, thus making them feel universal. This is especially prevalent in her descriptions of mental illness, at one point comparing depression to a “bus that goes by, goes by, and then stops going by,” showing you’ve once again missed the chance to do better for yourself.
The storyline of Sabrina stood out to me the most. It paints a portrait of a directionless and self-defeating young woman struggling with motivation after being scarred by a traumatic event committed at the hands of her best friend’s relative in adolescence. She floats between minimum wage jobs and welfare, not knowing how to get to the better version of life she so desperately aches for. In one instance, we sit in her thoughts while she is at an unemployment office, reckoning with her life choices: “[I was] forced to admit that I was getting older without becoming anything, forced to take off the rose-coloured glasses that had allowed me to interpret my meanderings as life-enriching experiences, forced to see these meanderings for what they were, detours off the right path…”
In the novel’s final chapters, we get a more in-depth portrayal of Sabrina’s relationships, particularly an all-consuming love with the counterculture American Jess. We also see more of Julie’s childhood and the emotional distance she feels from her parents, as well as the development of depression in adulthood. The more detailed illustrations of these characters’ backstories was very gratifying for me, getting the opportunity to truly understand how their past informs their present.
Overall, Clermont has created a thought-provoking story of people coming of age in an uncertain time and trying to make it out on the other end, a fundamental part of the human experience we can all relate to. I’m excited to see more of what she does in the future. Hopefully, she continues to push narrative boundaries in stories of cathartic emotional journeys.
The writer received a press copy of the books to review. However, this article is not sponsored and all opinions are their own.
Featured image provided by Ashley Van Elswyk.
