The Red Notebook

It's 1967. Change is everywhere in the air. The Quebec independence movement has been endorsed by Charles de Gaulle's famous "Vive le Quebec libre " and things will never be the same.

But unlike the "Plateau" novels, wherein Michel Tremblay's beloved characters are seen from the perspective of a child destined to discover the defining characteristic of his own otherness as gay, the "Notebooks" are narrated in the voice of a young woman, one whose difference is defined by her highly visible physical deformity--Celine Poulin is a midget.

Having always maintained that he does not write politics, but fables, Tremblay here celebrates how it is possible for Celine to embrace her difference and to flourish in a community of others with transcendent eloquence and compassion.