SOURCE; "Antonine Maillet's Eternal Return of the Acadian Character," in Quill & Quire, Vol. 52, No. 6, June, 1986, p. 37.

In the review below, Homel praises The Devil is Loose, the English translation of Crache-à-pic.

Beginning in 1755 an event occurred that the Acadians, with wry understatement, call le grand dérangement—"the big disruption"—their expulsion from their homeland in eastern Canada. Was the action directed from Britain, or was it a local initiative? Antonine Maillet, Acadia's best-known writer, is unsure which of the two versions is correct. But the themes of exile and return nourished her writing throughout her career as novelist and playwright. Two more of her novels were published in English translations last month: The Devil Is Loose by Lester & Orpen Dennys and Mariaagélas by Simon & Pierre. Though Mariaagélas was first published—in French—13 years before Devil, both books use the stuff of legend and oral...