Sing, Nightingale

Poitras (Griffintown) delivers a gloomy and lyrical fairy tale set in and around Noirax, a fictional French village. Shortly after the widowed master of the Malmaison estate, referred to almost exclusively as “the father,” receives an offer from a young woman named Aliénor to revive his farm’s dwindling fortunes, his melancholy son returns home, fleeing a failed marriage. By the time Aliénor arrives—“She throws back the father’s glass of chartreuse, salutes her hosts, and sits at the head of the table, facing the boar’s head, in the patriarch’s seat”—it’s clear she has an ominous agenda, which Poitras reveals alongside Malmaison’s dark history. Generations of women have come to bad ends here, and the author bewitches the reader with her folkloric narration of their stories and Aliénor’s retribution. Though some of the prose is a bit overripe, most of Poitras’s linguistic flights land just right. References to blood, mother’s milk and other bodily fluids abound, and numerous traditional French children’s songs “both innocent and cruel” punctuate the brimming narrative. This is a feast for lovers of gothic lit. (Feb.)