Nights too short to dance

Marie-Claire Blais, 1939-2021

Book - 2023

"René suddenly feels like an old man. In his 90s, recovering at home after an illness, his mind will not leave the past. He is both comforted and annoyed by the officious care provided byhis Russian nurse, who keeps referring to him as a woman. It is a lifetime struggle. Right ow, René just wants to get out of his pajamas and dress elegantly, as in the old days of playing piano in cabarets.A friend--or lover--will surely visit? And they do. René is soon surrounded. By the writer Johnie, the musician Doudouline, the theologian Polydor, thepainter l'Abeille, and Gérard, a lover of forbidden pleasures.They support each other, offering shelter from the cold, snowy world outside. They reminisce about past loves, tragedies, fights. ...The Stonewall riots. The AIDS pandemic where they lost so much. The Women's March on Washington. They steel themselves to take on the monster of bigotry and intolerance whenever it rears its ugly head, as it always does, again and again. Most of all, they find comfort and hope in each other's presence, and in the fight that so manyare continuing: to assert our own identities, to love how we wish, and not be defined by what society expects."-- more