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[quote=Anonymous]Finished The Savage Noble Death of Babs Dionne, by Ron Currie. 3.5/5 stars. The premise of the novel was interesting... matriarch of French-Canadian heritage Babs Dionne controls the flow of drugs into a small town in Maine, while trying to preserve her family and her Francophone culture as competition from rival drug lords encroaches upon her turf. It's endlessly bleak... lots of drugs, alcoholism, domestic violence, and trauma. Currie has sketched some interesting and complex female characters, and I was intrigued by the focus on the "Little Canada" neighborhood of French-speaking Mainers in which Babs holds court. However, much of the dialogue read as overly scripted (do rival drug lords really talk like this to each other?) and there are two scenes that are wildly out of place (one, near the end of the book, is cringe to the point of being ridiculous) and ruined the narrative flow.

One thing Currie does really well, better than most authors in books I've read recently, is his integration of non-English words and phrases into his novel. For this to work, it has to be possible for readers who don't speak or read the language to get the point across from the surrounding context. I remember reading another novel recently where I was annoyed by the Spanish phrases that were seemingly thrown in at random, making it difficult to discern what the characters were saying or what the author was trying to convey. Maybe I found it easier with this novel, given that I had a decent reading knowledge of French already, but I thought Currie did a great job with weaving the French-Canadian phrases and sayings into the narrative. Especially given that the French language plays such a big role in the characters' lives. 
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