Toast for Two Tongues

A notable contribution to Far Ouest literature, these nine short stories evoke the prairie epicurean and sweeten the sometimes bitter bilingual tongue in Western Canada. Villeneuve celebrates untranslatable moments of complete understanding across culture, age, time, and planes of existence. Four initial narratives “speak to” four matching, intersecting narratives, followed by a postface, “And What If You Burned My Bilingual Toast.” A blustery horse trader from Montana shares tall tales in a diner in Panorama, Saskatchewan. A young girl trains herself to hold her breath underwater. Four climbers emerge from a day lost at Mystic Canyon. An unnamed narrator grapples with the death of his Czech parents. This collection dishes up tales of peaceful coexistence between languages, foreign and familiar lands, myth and reality, writing and reading, air and water, fame and obscurity, exile and home. Bohemian and delicious, Toast for Two Tongues invites readers back for second helpings.