The second novel in the highly acclaimed series Charles the Bold, about a young man growing up in east-end Montreal."Montreal! You're going to be hearing from me! I'm going to make your ears ring!"These are the last words in this hypnotically interesting saga that follow the adventurous life of our bold hero, Charles Thibodeau. This book takes us through his high school years, and is called The Years of Fire for three reasons. First, he discovers girls, and we follow his fumbling but enthusiastic adventures with them. Second, he becomes fired up about politics ("Every so often he would raise his right hand and stare at it in amazement. Just think, it has just shaken the hand of René Lévesque!") and the first Quebec referendum plays a major role in this book. Above all, fire changes his life when his estranged father threatens his stepfather's store with arson, and Charles gets involved in dealing drugs to pay him off. How he...

The third novel in the highly acclaimed quartet, The Charles the Bold Series, about a young man growing up in Montreal from the 1960s to 2000.The last lines of volume two, The Years of Fire, have young Charles Thibodeau defiantly shouting “Montreal! You’re going to be hearing from me! I’m going to make your ears ring!” — just like Balzac’s hero Rastignac in Paris.Now, after leaving high school at sixteen, Charles takes the leap and sets out to write The Great Montreal Novel. His stepfather, Fernand, is furious — “If I ever run into that goddamned Balzac I’m going to wring his neck for him . . .” — but Charles rents an apartment and a typewriter and sets to work. What follows is Yves Beauchemin’s brilliant account of the joys and perils of a young novelist’s life. As the pages pile up, the money runs out. In due course, Charles has encounters with a sneering literary publisher and an oily vanity publisher, with predictable results.Desperate, Charles takes on any job that comes his way — in his stepfather’s hardware store, as a dog-catcher (his skill at barking provokes unlicensed dogs to bark back), and as a front man for a touring evangelist. Finally, he succeeds in getting a writing job. It’s at a third-rate magazine, but his foot is on the ladder.As always, Charles is supported by his friends during these adventures, and leads his life against the Quebec politics of the 1980s, involving Trudeau and others. And, as always, the sheer skill of Yves Beauchemin’s traditional storytelling sweeps us along, reminding us of the great novelists of the past.

Possibly the greatest novel published in Canada in 2004 — the first in a historic series.It’s as if Dickens or Balzac — or Rohinton Mistry — had decided to write the book that summed up life in east-end Montreal. This is the first volume of a quartet that has taken Quebec by storm, selling over forty-five thousand copies. On the very first page, we meet Charles Thibodeau being born. It’s 1966 and the rest of Montreal is more excited by the fact that a new subway system is opening, but his birth is a big event for Charles’s parents and for their working-class neighbours. Sadly, Charles’s mother dies when he is four, her funeral interrupted by War Measures Act soldiers on the streets. Soon young Charles, like a younger Huck Finn, is fending for himself. While he adopts a stray dog, Boff, in turn he is taken away from his drunken, violent father and becomes part of the Fafard family nearby. His adventures follow thick and fast — at school, where he avoids becoming a teacher’s pet, despite being smart, in a part-time job where he encounters a pederast, and at summer camp, where he establishes himself as a rebel. By the end of the book, he has fully earned his title, Charles the Bold, leaving us eager to follow his further adventures.But the real hero of this book is Montreal, and its scores of memorable, lively characters who leap off the page. Like Gabrielle Roy in The Tin Flute, Yves Beauchemin has given us an unforgettable portrait of life in the francophone east end — with more to come in this ambitious and richly rewarding saga.From the Hardcover edition.Review“Charles the Bold is a daring, fascinating, funny, intense, sad story. Occasionally it’s frustrating, and occasionally it’s predictable. In other words, the story is as daring, fascinating, funny, intense, sad, frustrating, and predictable as Quebec. In fact, the novel can be read as one extended metaphor about Quebec and the independence movement. . . . Another way to read this novel is as an adventure, like the adventure novels Charles reads to escape his fractured world. One character even tells him: ‘You’re like some hero in a novel!’ But this puts too narrow a scope on a novel of such depth of field and shifting focus.”– Raymond Beauchemin, Montreal Gazette“Charles is a kind of Oliver Twist and this is a very Dickensian story with a peculiarly Quebecois spin. . . . We’re willingly drawn along on the narrative, bouncing from episode to episode as Charles ages. The near-magical coincidences of history with the turning points in Charles’s life, together with the sentimentally charged symbols, characters and events, give this book a sparkle that counterbalances the tragedies and drudgeries Charles endures. This is a book to be read for the pleasure of it, for the characters we come to know and worry over, for the genuine suspense of all his childhood crises.” – Michel Basilières, Toronto Star“Beauchemin’s exceedingly readable and enchanting novel brings to life an indomitable child who survives and prospers despite his rough crossing. . . . A consummate storyteller, Beauchemin has been compared to Dickens, Rabelais and Balzac – just the captain to navigate us through the rough waters of an unforgettable character’s life.” – Elizabeth Johnston, Globe and Mail“Charles the Bold is a truly astonishing work. A beautifully crafted portrait of the artist as a young chil... About the AuthorYves Beauchemin, born in 1941 in Noranda, is a giant figure in modern Quebec. His second novel, The Alley Cat, (now in NCL) went on to become what The Canadian Encyclopedia calls “the all-time bestselling novel in Quebec literature.” The French edition of this book, Charles le Téméraire, has also been a huge success . . . and the quartet continues.