Not For Every Eye

Hervé Jodoin has come to the town of Saint Joachim to work in its only book shop. The proprietor, M. Léon Chicoine, is seemingly respectable, but he is in fact the secret agent for free thought and liberty. His special cherished wares are not for every eye . . . The confidence that M. Chicoine places in Hervé. complicated by Hervé’s having an affair with his landlady, leads to a row that involves the town priest and everyone else in Saint Joachim. A book by the subversive Voltaire has caused the crisis that is both touching and wonderfully comic.

Gérard Bessette is one of Quebec’s most prominent novelists. He has published literary criticism, poetry, short stories, and novels.

A novel written with great tact, humour and discipline, dealing with intellectual alienation and ennui in post-war Quebec. An extremely important novel, out of the usual self-indulgent and romantic mode of much contemporary Quebec fiction.