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Love Stories Now and Then
Love Stories Now and Then: A History of Les romans de'amour
by Marie-Pier Luneau and Jean-Phillippe Warren
translated by Carmen Ruschiensky
Baraka Books, 375 page, $29.95
At first glance, one wonders what could possibly be of interest for non-francophone readers in an exhaustive study of Quebec romance novels, a rather narrow but surprisingly voluminous niche of the distinct province’s literature.
Turns out, despite the commitment it takes to forge ahead in the dense but seamlessly translated English version of Love Stories Now and Then, there is much eye-opening information to be gleaned. Authors Marie-Pier Luneau, of the Département des arts, langues et littératures at Université de Sherbrooke, and Jean-Philippe Warren, a professor in Concordia University’s sociology and anthropology department, have collaborated to present a meticulously researched overview of la belle province romance literature from the early 1800s to the present.
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Surely, the most challenging aspect of the research would have been reading and analyzing the staggering corpus of novels in the genre. Indeed, one objective of the book was to define which works fit the strict criteria of “romance” novels. A key element, for example, is that the “fable must consist of a single love story whose unfolding structures the entire narrative.”
Invariably, the stories, which include a bewildering variety of heartthrobbing plots, reflect Quebec culture’s prevailing values, notably how love between a man and a woman — and in more recent years, between same-sex couples — relates to the church, the community, the family and the Quebec heartland.
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