Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Once a modest farmer, the patriarch of the Delorme family has made a killing when he sold his land to a railway company. Following in his footsteps, his son Louis-Dollard has built a luxurious apartment building in the center of town and is now a wealthy landlord. At his father's death, he robs his brother of his inheritance in order to build a house designed like a bank, with brass-grilled counters and an underground vault hidden behind the furnace. The vault's ceiling is covered with a mosaic of verdigris pennies, and its walls are painted with the same green ink as dollar bills. Louis-Dollard, his miserly wife Estelle and his three spinster sisters love money so much that they literally revere it, with the Green Chamber serving as their place of worship. They have elevated domestic penny-pinching to an art form. And they intend for their heir, Vincent, to make a highly profitable marriage. The arrival, in the neighborhood, of a rich young woman, Penny Sterling, makes them even greedier. They pull all stops to seduce her into joining the family. But Vincent will have none of it, nor will Penny. Together, they conspire to set fire to the Green Chamber - and bring the family down.
Synopsis
Set between 1913 and 1963 in one of Montreal's well-known, upper-middle-class suburban neighbourhoods, Martine Desjardins's The Green Chamber is a fast-paced, highly atmospheric, riveting novel that chronicles the decline of a wealthy French-Canadian family over the course of three generations.
Every house has its secrets, but none hides them better than the august house of the Delorme family. With its sixty-seven locks, brass-grilled counters, and impenetrable underground vault - where lie the mummified remains of a woman clutching a brick between her teeth - the Delorme residence may be apprehended as The Green Chamber's central persona. A private bank of a sort, it has always held its lot of ill-acquired gains, hidden vices, cruel rituals, and illicit substances away from prying eyes. Louis-Dollard Delorme, his miserly wife Estelle, and his three spinster sisters revere money so much that they have converted their residence's "Green Chamber" into a place of worship and have elevated domestic penny-pinching to an art form. As for the family's heir, Vincent, they intend for him to make a highly profitable marriage - a reasonable prospect, until the day when the house opens its door to Penny Sterling, a young woman whose means equal only her curiosity.
Desjardins's humorous gothic saga - with its gallery of eccentric characters who play the races in secret and sniff vanilla extract - reveals and revels in the fate of family fortunes, where the first generation makes the money, the second generation maintains it, and the third blows it.
The novel's plot and themes arise, larger than life, from the history of the author's own family, and from that of her suburban hometown, Mount Royal, whose founding is closely linked to the development of Canada's national railroad and early industry. The Green Chamber exposes the birth of capitalistic religiosity and sheds light on our economic present: personal finances, once based on a nest-egg savings system, have become a credit-based and debt-ridden travesty.