It is June 20, 1952, a decade after the events described in The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, the first volume of Michel Tremblay's series of autobiographical fiction. The mystic, yet palpable instant of summer's arrival is experienced simultaneously by the fat woman's son (who is never named) and Marcel. These moving, profoundly different epiphanies of a transforming world, seen through the memories of the characters, set the stage for...