Un Ange cornu avec des ailes de tole.

Un Ange cornu is a book for people who love to read - not for scholars and critics who dissect texts, but for people who love to sink their teeth into a juicy plot and find out what happens next.

In this delightful, tender memoir, Michel Tremblay, one of Canada's most highly respected writers, recalls growing up in a poor, French-speaking family in Montreal and how he came to cherish books. The author's grandmother, an uneducated farm woman transplanted to the city, and his perpetually exhausted, overweight mother find refuge in fiction. Grand-moman doesn't know a simile from an oxymoron, but she loves a meaty story, and she spends her days devouring one novel after the other. She reads indiscriminantly - great works and trash, masters and hacks. Before he even knows the alphabet, little Michel is trudging down the street transporting the books that Grand-moman has finished to her neighbor, Madame Allard, and bringing back fresh supplies. Curiously, Grand-moman and Madame Allard never meet each other; they are bound only by their common passion for a good read.

Touching, perceptive, and often hilarious, Un Ange cornu re-creates the author's early years up until the publication of his first fiction collection. Each chapter is dedicated to a book that influenced his life, from his first storybook to the sophisticated readings of his young adulthood. L'Auberge de l'Ange-Guardien [The Inn of the Guardian Angel], his first real book with more text than pictures, frustrates him to tears because it includes large segments of dialogue in play form. Furthermore, it was written by a certain Countess of Segur, and "Countess" sounds more to him like a dog's name than a person's. His mother's efforts to explain rank and nobility are truly sidesplitting, not only because of Tremblay's effervescent dialogue, but also because of his ability to capture, through the jumbled definitions of this unsophisticated housewife, the absurdity of the notion of social caste.

Un Ange cornu is not narrated from the perspective of the child Michel, but from that of the mature author who looks back and analyzes how his early readings formed his consciousness. Much of the poignancy derives from the innocence with which he approached certain texts and his gradual awakening to their underlying meanings. For example, Tintin au Congo [Tintin in the Congo], one volume in a popular French picture-book adventure series, is a frankly racist depiction of Europeans in Africa. As a child, Tremblay found it hysterically funny. As an adult, he shivers at the realization that from birth he, as a Quebecois, has been a victim of the very cultural and political colonialism described in the book.

Tremblay's memoir is not merely an assortment of plots and commentaries, but a vivid and sometimes disturbing picture of everyday life in the Montreal of the fifties, where things are changing rapidly. If Jules Verne introduces young Michel to a world of high-tech fantasy, the new, modern grocery store with its mechanical doors and mass-produced products suggests that perhaps that world is not so far off. When Michel's father, a printer with a warm heart and a penchant for the bottle, takes him to the market, he points out the cans of Campbell's soup and claims responsibility for the perfectly uniform, bright red labels, which was achieved through a special combination of inks that he formulated. At the time, Michel is amazed. Later, he wonders whether his father's claim is true, or if it is simply the attempt of an aging man with outmoded skills to gain respect from a son who shows disdain for his blue-collar roots. All during his childhood, the family is plagued with poverty. Often Michel pretends to be looking at a bookstore window while waiting for an opportunity to dart furtively into the Household Finance office, where he will make a tiny payment on his mother's loan. And yet, this very poor family is rich in love.

Through reading, Tremblay begins to form a concept of his own identity and the position of French Canada. Why are the best books imported from France? Why aren't there more French Canadian authors? On one occasion the librarian lends him a book by a young English girl, and he is outraged that even a child can publish a book in England, while so few French Canadians - even talented, educated adults - can publish in their own country. He begins to question everything. What happened to the dwarfs after Snow White left with the Prince? How is it that the powerful use, then abandon, those who once saved their necks? - a particularly pertinent question in the decade or so that follows the war.

The young Tremblay loves books more than anything - more than sports, more than vacations, more than girls. And so the two great secrets that gnaw at him throughout his adolescence - two secrets that he never is able to share with his mother in spite of their closeness - come as no surprise at all to the reader: He is homosexual, and he wants to be a writer. Being gay in Catholic French Canada in the fifties and sixties is a nightmare. The librarians even refuse to lend him a book by a gay Canadian author. But worse yet is being an aspiring writer in a country in which literary success seems an impossibility. In the Linotype room where he works after graduation, his tough, burly co-workers suspect his secrets and make fun of him. The publication of his first collection of stories not only vindicates him, but also marks the direction of the rest of his life. Tremblay goes on to become one of Canada's leading novelists and playwrights, with a following on both sides of the Atlantic.

It is a shame that Tremblay, a writer of marvelous talent, is not better known in the English-speaking world, and yet, it is not surprising. The impact of Tremblay's work stems from his incredible manipulation of language, his phenomenal ear for the Quebecois dialect. The distinctly regional quality of his dialogue makes it difficult to render into English. And yet, in his understated descriptions of the struggles and joys of everyday life, there is universality, and his exuberant celebration of books will appeal to avid readers of all backgrounds.