Translation of: La grosse femme d'à côté est enceinte.

"The first volume of Michel Tremblay's immense "Chroniques du plateau Mont-Royal", finds him abandoning much of the bleakness and anger that sustain his plays in favour of a more benevolent mode of storytelling. Without relinquishing his favourite themes--the social and spiritual poverty of working-class Quebec--Tremblay brings a lovingly comic approach to the inhabitants of la rue Fabre. The result is a rarity, a novel that realistically and (almost) unsentimentally portrays the family life of the working poor without drowning in misery. Misery is, of course, everywhere on the plateau Mont-Royal. The women of la rue Fabre (with the exception of two prostitutes, Mercedes and Béatrice) are trapped in their marriages, families, and religion; the men (again, with the exception of the half-mad fiddler Josaphat-le-Violon and the homosexual Uncle Edouard) work at uninspiring jobs and lead uninspired lives. Children are granted a slight reprieve from this fate, but their coming adulthood is a looming menace"

Canada Reads, 2009 finalist