Testament
On June 6, 2012, Vickie Gendreau was diagnosed with a brain tumour. In between treatments, between hospital stays and her "room of her own," she wrote Testament, an autofictional novel in which she imagines her death and at the same time, bequeaths to her friends and family both the fragmented story of her last year and the stories of the loved ones who keep her memory alive, in language as raw and flamboyant as she was.
In the teasing and passionate voice of a twenty-three-year-old writer, inspired as much by literature as by YouTube and underground music, Gendreau's sense of image, her relentless self-deprecation, and the true emotion in every sentence add up to an uncompromising work that reflects the life of a young woman who lived without inhibitions, for whom literature meant everything right up until the end.
In this way, Testament (translated by talented writer and translator Aimee Wall), inverts the elegiac, "grief memoir" form and plays with the notion of a last testament, thereby beating any would-be eulogists to the punch.
VICKIE GENDREAU was born in Montréal in 1989. While working in Montréal strip clubs from October 2009 to June 2012, she was also active in the literary community, where she participated in events like the Off-Festival de poésie de Trois-Riviéres. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2012, and passed away a year later. Her first novel, Testament, written after her diagnosis, was published in the fall of 2012 and longlisted for the 2013 Prix littéraire France-Québec. Her second novel, Drama Queens, was published in 2014. The English adaptation of Testament, translated by Aimee Wall, was published by Book*hug Press in the fall of 2016.
AIMEE WALL is a writer and translator. Wall's translations include Sadie X by Clara Dupuis-Morency, Vickie Gendreau's novels Testament and Drama Queens, and Sports and Pastimes by Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard. Her acclaimed debut novel, We, Jane was nominated for nine literary prizes including the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the BMO Winterset Award, the ReLit Award for Fiction, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. Wall was born in Newfoundland and lives in Montreal.
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