Paré’s new novel blends the sacred and the erotic.
A new novel by Ogunquit, Maine, resident Paul Paré explores the secret lives of Catholic seminarians and middle-aged closeted men in a driving narrative that has attracted critical attention.
“Singing the Vernacular” travels from the snow-covered countryside of Québec in the 1960s to the desert landscapes of Southern California in the 1990s, with an occasional nod to the principal character’s youth in a New England mill town. The book is both a coming of age story and a coming out story. It was recently published by iUniverse of Bloomington, Indiana, and is now widely available on Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble’s website, and other sources.
§ “A totally enjoyable entry into the rich borderland of American and Canadian literature…a breath of fresh air,” is the endorsement given by Barry Rodrigue, Associate Professor and Scholar at the University of Southern Maine.
§ “The novel is heartrending and poignant, stylistically impressive, and beautifully tethered to geography,” chimed in Joy Tutela, a literary agent in New York City.
§ “The protagonist struggles along two roads in life, one sacred and the other erotic, until they converge, changing forever the direction of his journey. A brilliant gay novel,” added William S. Palmer, Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina.
Marc Ladouceur, the main character, thought he wanted to become a priest. His mother, his Aunt the Nun, and his pastor knew he should be one. His constant doubts about his vocation ended when he left the seminary, but his sexual ambivalence haunted him for years. Marc spends his adult life looking at men, but he never has any. Fighting job boredom and grieving the loss of his wife of twenty-five years, Marc embarks on a desert road trip that will push him out of his depression and out of the closet. At a Palm Springs resort, he confronts the gay lifestyle he has denied himself.
Well crafted, with complex and compelling characters, this novel explores a number of contemporary issues: homosexuality in the Catholic priesthood, bisexuality, closeted married men, peer pressure at any age, how to age gracefully.
The author, a resident of Ogunquit, Maine, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, began his writing career as a newspaper reporter in Lewiston, Maine, in the late 60s. He worked in public relations and as an editor and radio-television producer, winning an Emmy in the early 80s. With his partner of twelve years, Michael Ferry, he owns an antique shop in Maine and tax preparation businesses in Massachusetts and Florida. He still finds time to write, and two other novels are currently in the works.
Commenting on his first novel, Paré points out that the work is fiction while acknowledging that his own life has inspired the framework of the book. “I may have lived through a few of the situations in the novel, but their treatment and the characters involved are entirely fictitious,” he states. “That’s why it took ten years to write; there was so much I had to make up. And, really, that was the fun of it,” he added.
An excerpt of “Singing the Vernacular” was included in “Voyages: A Franco-American Reader” (Tilbury House, 2007), a project undertaken by the Franco-American Studies Program at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston campus. Paul Paré can be reached at pmpare@comcast.net or on his blog: whatspargottosay.blogspot.com.
