“Forty year from now there will be nothing left of us. Our memory and the photographs and the recollections of those who disappeared will all be gone, like the notes from a cello in the ruins of an old house. (…)
Forty years from now, no one will remember this kiss, or this night, or this bar and the infinite emptiness that fills it. (…)
Forty years from now, no one will remember us.”
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace by the Canadian writer, Matthieu Simard is a profoundly haunting meditation on grief, isolation, and emptiness that follows when one faced with loss. This is also an exquisite study in the meaning of memory and act of remembrance bringing to mind the prose of Patrick Modiano. Relationships marred by secrets, lies, heavy silences and slow disintegration are also explored in this short story. Ultimately, The Country Will Bring Us No Peace portrays human life marked by the permanence of grief and one’s attempt to find a new path where life is a little bit more bearable, and one might not be burdened by the past as much.
When it comes to the prose itself, Matthieu Simard offers melancholic simplicity. His writing is sparse but, at the same time, poetic, introspective, quiet, atmospheric and simply beautiful.
“We tell ourselves lies in order to survive. Trade them, like kids with their old toys. In this town that’s a foreign land to us, we’ll learn to invent those truths that provide the greatest succour. I now know we’ll never be able to forget the past, but that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, despite it all. Forget the past, love each other in the present moment. Cut off from the world, we’ll conceal our scars beneath the sleeves of out false hopes.”
The story follows Simon and Marie’s complex relationship while they are dealing with grief. The couple leaves their life in the bustling city to move to the small rural community to start a new chapter in their lives. What they encounter there could not be further from the idyllic and peaceful existence. The local residents seem to be strangely hostile to the newcomers like Simon and Marie. Their interactions appear bizarre and in some sense otherworldly. Throughout the book we are presented with the alternating perspectives, once we see the reality from Simon’s point of view and then we are confronted with Marie’s perception of the surroundings. The final events are referenced throughout the novella but the reason behind them are revealed to the readers in a paced and slow manner. The main characters in the book are heavily burdened by grief and depression.The natural landscapes and small-town community are depicted eerily which in some some can be a metaphor for an emotional and psychological landscape of Simon’s and Marie’s state of mind. The presence of mysteries such as the absence of birds singing symbolises the life overtaken by grief where there is no renewal of cycles of life, no new beginning and no hope for the future. The ominous presence of a relic antenna throughout the book symbolises disconnection with the outside world and it shows that even with the most technological advances we are still adept at mitigating the impact of grief on the individual life.
“We’ll soon see how small town are more stifling than big cities. We came here in search of a particular peace that we felt we deserved: wide-open spaces and tall grass and silence and no one around. We escaped the crowds to bury our paltry sorrows and tend to our grand hopes, in the peace and quiet of the countryside. But we forgot one fundamental truth: bombs sound loudest in the desert.”
Simard also touches on the themes of industrialisation of the natural world and its meaning for the human existence as well as the elitist perception of life in the rural communities.
“Every town has its stories. Dark secrets, accidents, disappearances.(…) Every little town has the same stories, and they’re always a lot like our own. We chose his house, we chose to be here, to be far away from our old house. As if distance could change anything. We were wrong, of course. (…) Our wounds could never heal here (…). But we’ll abide in sorrow (…), just like everyone else here.”
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace constitutes one of the most haunting and moving portrayals of grief and meditation on the impossibility of locating one’s place in the world when dealing with loss of the loved one. Matthieu Simard exercises a very unique approach when tackling the subject of grief – it is wrenchingly beautiful capturing the depth of sadness and resignation.
The Country Will Bring Us No Peace is a wonderful literary achievement. I highly recommend it.
2 Comments
Hi! I just finished this book and am left with a lot of questions. Namely, what do you think is the purpose of the antenna to the whole of the book? Is the book supposed to be read as supernatural or is it purposefully ambiguous? Do you think the supernatural reading is meant to symbolize the all-consuming nature of grief and how it can be so deep in you that it forces you to see and feel things that aren’t physically real? I’d love to know your thoughts! -AG
Thank you for your comment and questions. 🙂 In my view, the purpose of supernatural and eerie elements used in the book by the author is supposed to show the all-consuming nature of grief and emotional pain associated with the loss of the loved ones. in some sense the village with all its oddities can be a metaphor for the state of minds of Simon and Marie. In depth of despair and grief the reality around us can often be perceived by us differently to how it appears to others who do not go through this kind of emotions. When it comes to the antenna, in some sense it symbolizes the most recent technological advances but it is not working similarly to communication between between Simon and Marie as well as between them and the rest of the town. In some sense it says that grief is such a strong emotion that despite all the technological advances in medicine we still are not good at mitigating it or knowing how to deal with it without being completely consumed by it. The antenna also symbolizes disconnection from the outside world; having an antenna in the town / village is a sign of some sort of hope but it is out of order and impossible to fix it, again a bit like grief.
The village / small town with the antenna and lack of birds’ singing and all eerie things happening can be also interpreted an emotional landscape experienced by our both protagonists, with the antenna being a symbol of disconnection from the outside world and lack of communication and lack of birds’ singing being a symbol of the end of life-cycle for Simon and Marie.
This is just from top of my head. I would need to think this through a bit more.
Anyways thank you for your interesting questions and I might actually add a paragraph about the antenna to my ramblings about this book.
I am happy you enjoyed this novel. It was one of my favourite ones I have read in the recent years, in a similar way to The Wall by Marlen Haushofer.
Take care, Joanna