Le Souffle de l'harmattan

We didn't understand the poem very well, but we loved the words that descended, it seemed to us, like water drops into a torture chamber. One day, we told ourselves, one fine day, we would understand, that was certain, and we couldn't wait.

Hughes feels like an outsider in his own family. He had been found in a shopping cart in a ditch as an infant, and his parents took him in as they thought they could have no children of their own. But, as sometimes happens, Hughes ended up with two younger siblings and thinks that his family would prefer to be without him. He then meets Habéké, who had lived in Ethiopia until he was nine, and was then adopted by a white Québécois couple during the famine. As two outsiders, they quickly become best show more friends and run wild together. At first, their adventures mean selling decorated shells to people in their summer cottages, but as their shared fantasies of an imaginary Africa grow, those adventures take a dangerous turn.

The Harmattan Winds is written from the point of view of a fourteen year old boy, but a fourteen year old with the soul of a forty year old beat poet. Both boys are influenced by an imaginary poet they can't understand and the idea that they should be living wild in Africa, free from school and parents and other authority figures. Trudel presents this as the ideal, and for a time, at least when they are spending their summer in a cottage in the countryside, it seems largely harmless. Trudel puts the narration firmly in Hughes's head, letting him describe the ideas and motivations that drive he and his friend, in a way that makes the dangerousness of their exploits clear, even as Hughes tries to make them sound reasonable. Hughes's voice is certainly remarkable and how well you respond to the writing style will determine how much you enjoy this book. show less