Jean-Christophe Réhel, All Kidding Aside. QC Fiction 2025 (first published in French 2023 as La blague du siècle), pb, 303 pp. Translated by Neil Smith.

There’s a hint of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men about Jean-Christophe Réhel’s novel All Kidding Aside. The central character is 32-year-old Louis, who lives in Pointe-aux-Trembles, east Montreal. He’s a carer for his terminally ill father, but more to the point for his hulking schizophrenic brother, who’s obsessed with playing rap music at full volume, and constantly on the verge of psychotic episodes. Louis is often frustrated and angry with Guillaume’s erratic behaviour, but their mutual love is palpable.

This might all sound a bit grim, but it’s a deeply moving, heartfelt account of familial love and loyalty. Louis is in a dead-end job working at a fast-food joint, the tedium of which is alleviated by the generosity and friendship of one of his co-workers. His father is weirdly obsessed with finding love via dating apps, and one of his dates turns out to be a truly supportive figure when there’s a crisis.

There’s not much in the way of plot; we simply see this family group struggling to cope with adverse circumstances, but finding resources and depths of affection that are inspiring and uplifting to read about. Despite the sobering content, it’s not a pessimistic or depressing read. There’s a lot of humour that blends naturally with the seriousness. The title, for example, alludes to Louis’ dream of becoming a stand-up comedian, and he often visits a local bar that has regular comedy nights.

The translation is worth a separate comment. I’ve recently read the first two volumes of the Penguin Classics selections (in chronological order) of Chekhov’s short stories. I struggled with them at times, partly because the translation was sometimes stodgy and awkward. I don’t like to criticise a translator’s work, because it’s a very difficult feat to pull off convincingly. Neil Smith has done a terrific job with this novel. There’s a lot of French-Canadian idiom and local profanity (which merit their own endnote to explain their Catholic church origins, weirdly) which must have been particularly tricky to render into something that sounds authentic in English – but he manages it with aplomb. It’s one of the most fluent, natural and unobtrusive translations I recall reading in a long time. Even the English title is an inventive and successful rendering of the French original.

My thanks to QC Fiction for providing me with this review copy.