I liked the thriller element that to me mixes with the dystopian nature of the book. I love a short story and loved this one. So much in so few pages. I liked the changing points of view and how it was so accurate in their struggle.

I just loved this heart-breaking little book. Short it may be, but so powerful and moving. It tells the story of Simon and Marie who flee to the country where they hope their desire to have a baby will come to fruition. But village life is rarely the expected idyll and things turn out to be much stranger and more sinister than they could ever have imagined. I’m not going mention more about the storyline as the less known in advance the better. Suffice it to say this is a novel about profound grief and loss, lies and secrets. Menace and foreboding pervade the pages and I felt compelled to read it at one sitting. One of the saddest books I have ever read. Highly recommended.

This novella is narrated from two alternating points of view – that of Simon and Marie, a couple who have moved to a house in the country, in a bid to settle down to a quieter life. The protagonists are desperately trying to have a child and their obsession about this seems to be pushing them apart. It is clear that there was – and quite possibly still is – a great love between them, but by now, little lies and secrets have become a daily characteristic of their relationship. Despite their optimistic plans, something is not quite right about the village where they have chosen to live. At first, the villagers seem quite friendly – even too friendly perhaps. Yet, they also make it immediately clear that the couple are not wanted here and will always be considered as outsiders. Just like Simon and Marie’s neighbours, the Lavoies, who with their picture-perfect family and showy materialistic lifestyle, could not be more different from our couple – or from the community which has (not) welcomed them.

The villagers also make vague allusions to tragic occurrences in the community’s past and, particularly, to some dark story which seems to be linked to previous occupier of the house where Simon and Marie live. They are even warned to leave “for their own good”.

Simard builds an atmosphere of dread around the village. It often feels bleak and silent, as if even the birds have lost their song. This lack of sound is a recurring theme – on the title page, the work is described or subtitled as “a novel without music”; the cello which Marie used to play and which she carried with her to the village sits silent in its case; a mysterious young woman roams the streets, allegedly deaf and dumb after a mysterious accident; no children can be heard playing in the park or the surrounding forest; the birds no longer sing. Ominously overlooking the village stands a much-hated antenna, which is seemingly the cause of the all the community’s woes or, perhaps, just a sentinel or witness to the daily tragedies of life. After all, as Marie points out:

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.

In The Country Will Bring Us No Peace, Matthieu Simard has given us a strange yet poignant novella. It is a portrayal of grief and its aftermath, whether in a family or, more widely, in a community. Yet, the strong elements of realism are also combined with the more fantastical flavours of genre fiction: the mysteries and secrets surrounding the small town would not be out of place in a thriller or crime novel, while the uncanny elements (what exactly is the antenna all about? And what is really happening in the forest?) skirt the boundaries of speculative and weird fiction. There's even a dose of humour in the dialogue.

In just over a hundred pages, Simard distils material which lesser authors would have padded out into a tome. The novella delivers gut-and-heart-wrenching twists in a language which, throughout, retains a distinctive, elegiac lyricism expertly conveyed in this English translation by Pablo Strauss. This is a special book.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley.

I was a tad bummed I couldn't download a kindle version, as that's highly preferred.. but.. on to the book itself.

It was an okay book. There wasn't anything about the writing that really drew me in persay or impressed me. it was an interesting topic at best.

In this story, the author portrays the facts of life. He writes about a couple, a great couple, how they were found and how they were lost again. He writes of Simon, the forbearing husband, and his wife Marie, a perfectionist and a great wife. Ironically, they're both liars like countless other stories that are told so often. This one, on the other hand, is a parable. Perhaps everyone can take meaning from it and read their own lives into it.

In this eerie and atmospheric book, Marie and Simon move to the country to get away from their memories. The dying town where they find a home…not the perfect home, but a home nonetheless… turns out to be anything but a haven. There’s the creepily clinging summer-home mother next door, a handyman with an unpleasant habit of getting too close to Marie, a deaf and mute girl who seems to personify Simon’s unhappiest memories, and a child’s playground with no children. Marie and Simon spend a lot of time in their own heads, and the book is told in their alternating voices. When it slips into first person, the narrative can be disorienting until the reader figures out who’s head we are in.

It’s never quite clear what is going on in this town which is being slowly abandoned. Nor is it clear if we are reading a psychological study or a ghost story. Perhaps in the end it is some of both, but neither theme is presented in the way we are used to. Simon finds a sort of refuge in the forest, and when Marie finds out, she asks him to take her there. What happens at that point seems both inevitable and shocking.

This is quite an unusual book. I didn’t love being in either Marie’s or Simon’s head, but in spite of all that introspection, the plot moved along quickly. This is a book for those who enjoy being unsettled. It’s a very well written portrayal of despair and its consequences.