Böcker av Norman Beaupre

This is the sequel to the first part of the author's memoir, The Little Eater of Bleeding Hearts. The first part goes from early childhood to about the age of seventeen when we leave the young man on the beach at Fortunes Rocks in Biddeford, Maine. The second part When the Flowers Are Gone covers the age of maturity, from seventeen on to the stages of full growth up to retirement from the university as Professor Emeritus. This part covers an entire panoply of activities, awards and involvement in teaching and social life. It includes the many travels and numerous participatory experiences in academic life including several courses that the author taught and devised such as "Transcultural Healing," that was initially based on the concept of Hispanic curanderismo. Most of all, the author lists the many books that he conceived, both in English and in French, that were eventually published. This two-part refreshing of the many memories in the author's life becomes his legacy both as a human being and teacher who struggled with the concept of success until he reached his goal as a full-fledged author and respected teacher.

It's a surprising combination of the illustrations of three animals that represent a collection of cautionary tales. The author counts on the creative imagination of the reader to grasp the full meaning of the three animals represented here: a boa constrictor, an elephant and a whale. The boa constrictor and the elephant are taken from the imaginative tale of St-Exupéry's "The Little Prince" where we find a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant that grown ups call a "hat." As to the whale, it's there to remind the reader of the Biblical whale that swallowed Jonah.It's a reminder of being in the belly of the beast. The cautionary tales in this book are thus represented as tales of the creative imagination that remind the reader that sometimes one needs to be cautious about what one does or hears. The author simply asks the reader to open one's mind to the fascination of imaginary tales that rival so called fact and reality. Children are most often sensitive to what grown-ups fail to decipher and understand.They see a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant while grownups see a hat.

Two boys grow up during World War II, Gerard in New England, Morgen in Berlin. They live parallel lives: their families experience similar changes, similar suffering. The world says they are enemies. What makes an enemy? Why are people designated as enemies? If these two later met, what would they think of each other?WWII and the Hitler’s elimination of the undesirables alter the daily lives of both boys immeasurably. Morgen’s father, a pacifist doctor, deserts his own troops and escapes with a Viennese friend, himself a marked man. The parallel situations of the two boys and their families balance the two sides of the war. We see, not the propaganda, but the real effects the war had on civilians in both countries. We also see the ‘forgotten’ undesirables such as Gypsies, homosexuals, blacks and Japanese-Americans. Woven into all these lives is the quest for sanity and freedom from hatred.

“The Little Eater of Bleeding Hearts is a testimony of a milieu and of  an era that  history has no right to erase.”   ANTONINE MAILLET Very rarely do Americans dare to write in French nowadays. The author, Norman Beaupré, has a special talent for doing so. He's the one who translated his original autobiographical novel, Le Petit Mangeur de Fleurs(The Little Eater of Flowers), with a sensitivity to words as well as  an exceptional authenticity in expressing his thoughts on his own growing up. One could easily say that it is the merger of the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of one who has struggled to maintain his own cultural identity as a Francophone writer. The author revealed, during one interview in France, that he found the work authentic for many reasons but especially because he had to recollect memories from long past that were, and still are, painful to him. The Francophone population of New England laments the erosion of its language and culture. Each one struggles in his own way attempting to remain faithful to the collective identity they grew up with. Norman Beaupré, while playing with words and sometimes with bleeding hearts, dares to become, by doing so, one of the standard bearers of the ethnic group to which he belongs. This work not only touches upon memories of growing up but the very lives with which the author came into contact from as far as he can remember up to his late teens. A work of cultural richness and pride(fierté), as a reader from Dijon, France, once expressed to the author at a Salon du Livre that he attended in 2007.