Vandal Love
Vandal Love by D. Y. Béchard is a First Edition novel published by Doubleday Canada on January 17, 2006. This 352-page work presents the story of a unique French-Canadian family as they navigate their identities across North America throughout the twentieth century. The narrative explores the impact of a family curse that results in the Hervé children being born either giants or runts, delving into their struggles and experiences in a world that often feels unwelcoming.
Readers will find a rich tapestry of interconnected lives, beginning with Jude Hervé’s journey as a boxer and his subsequent escape to raise his daughter, Isa. The narrative shifts to the runts of the family, highlighting François’s quest for his father and Harvey’s retreat into spiritual exploration. Through its political and poetic themes, Vandal Love examines the complexities of love and identity, offering a profound reflection on the human experience and the search for belonging.
Official synopsis Publisher
An astonishing novel, Vandal Love follows generations of a unique French-Canadian family across North America, and through the twentieth century, as they struggle to find their place in the world.
A family curse – a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship – causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. Book I of Vandal Love follows the giants’ line, exploring Jude Hervé’s career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life alone with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man.
Book II traces a different kind of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. François searches for years for his missing father; his own son, Harvey, flees from modern society into spiritual quests. But none of the Hervés can abandon their longing for a place where they might find others like themselves.
In assured and almost mystically powerful prose, D.Y. Béchard tells a wide-ranging, spellbinding story of a family trying to create an identity in an unwelcoming North America. Political, poetic, and philosophically searching, and imbued throughout with a deep sensitivity to the physical world, Vandal Love is a breathtaking literary debut about the power of love to create and destroy – in our lives, and in our history.
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