From Publishers Weekly
Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian journalist in Rwanda planning a film on the local AIDS epidemic when he falls in love with Gentille, a Tutsi who works at his hotel at the time of the Hutu-led genocides. Chronicling the days of the government-sponsored atrocities, Courtemanche's novel is powerful in its ability to remind us how much the myth of race has done to divide and destroy the human species in the past hundred years. At the same time, however, it strains to position itself as a sort of neo-existentialist tome, quoting Camus and echoing The Plague. Valcourt describes himself without irony as "sophisticated... an enlightened humanist," and yet his childish self-pity and bitter refusal to accept life's harsh realities are less the trappings of a great intellectual than the alcoholic he obviously is. From the swimming pool terrace of the H"tel des Mille-Collines in Kigali, he observes the rapidly deteriorating situation, "rather like a buzzard on a branch... waiting for a scrap of life to excite him." His supposedly spiritual love for Gentille is intended to redeem him, but it most often takes the form of a rhapsody over her "perfect" body. The Rwanda painted by Courtemanche (a Canadian journalist himself) is a country bloodied by ignorance, hatred, sexual obsession and lust for power, as terrifying and darkly obscene as anything imaginable. Tragic and deeply touching at turns (and illuminating from an historical perspective), the novel is nevertheless cheapened by Valcourt's muddled sentimentalizing and adolescent grandiloquence. As Einstein said, everything is either meaningless or miraculous. Most often it's romantics who, becoming cynics, embrace the former.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Between April and July of 1994, some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were systematically slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors in the tiny African country of Rwanda, the culmination of decades of institutionalized oppression. The killings were carried out neighbor-against-neighbor, by machete, gun or hand grenade, with torture and unimaginable brutality. Women, in particular, were singled out for terror equal to any crime against humanity in history. Although the Western powers were amply represented in Kigali by a robust U.N. peacekeeping force and armies of professional aid workers from France, Belgium and Canada, they made no intervention. To date, the U.N. Tribunal for Rwanda has convicted 12 Hutu leaders. Since 1994, Rwanda has given new life to the defining questions of the post-Holocaust world. How did the perpetrators turn with such stupendous bloodlust on their neighbors? How did victims await their torture and death so helplessly? How did the West so incredibly fail to respond? To the huge literature of these questions Gil Courtemanche, a Canadian journalist, has added a novel. If the "investigative novel" were a recognized category, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali would define many of its virtues. Courtemanche describes his book as a "chronicle and eyewitness report" and specifies that its "characters all existed in reality." Footnotes provide historical documentation and explanation, and a reader coming to this book from even a cursory reading of journalistic accounts of the genocide immediately recognizes the profound authenticity of Courtemanche's vision. The "pool in Kigali" is that of the Hotel des Milles-Collines, a centrally located gathering place in the early spring of 1994 for "international experts and aid workers, middle-class Rwandans, screwed-up or melancholy expatriates of various origins, and prostitutes." Here, Valcourt, a Canadian journalist, watches with a jaundiced eye over the drama of local wheeling and dealing, diplomatic toadying, military corruption and AIDS-ridden whoring: the colorful and tragic texture of life in a corrupt post-colonial African republic. It's a predictable enough portrait but it is seen with quivering rage and documentary exactitude through Valcourt's eyes; in a very true picture of a foreign correspondent's perception, he is jaded enough to show the truth but still retain a boundless capacity for moral outrage. "From the Napalm in Vietnam," Courtemanche writes, "he had come away burned; from the Cambodian holocaust, speechless; from the Ethiopian famine, broken, exhausted, stooped." But Valcourt loves Rwanda, he loves its people, and somehow he cannot lose hope for this beautiful country. In particular, Valcourt loves a virginal girl called Gentille, and his meditation on her body and -- eventually -- her sentimental and sensual education under his tutelage takes up all of his attention that is not devoted to a fine depiction of Kigali in the days before horror erupts. It is not an innovative meditation."Gentille, whose name is as lovely as her breasts, which are so pointed they abrade her starched shirt-dress, Gentille, whose face is more lovely still, and whose [expletive] is more disturbing in its impudent adolescence than anything else about her . . ." and so on. Against the backdrop of Rwanda's descent into what will soon become a world-changing orgy of blood, witnessed and catalogued by a host of bureaucrats, meticulously documented in Courtemanche's shocking exactitude, a January-May, black-white love affair prepares itself. Documentary horror is vividly juxtaposed against middle-aged fantasy, the one as compelling as the other is trite. Courtemanche gives us an inside view into what divides journalism, a noble craft, from fiction, which is -- no matter how debased -- an art. As a love story, Sunday is quite a poor novel, stumbling over the pitfall, common to journalists who turn to fiction, of confusing fantasy with the imaginative truth of fiction. As such, Sunday reads consistently like a journalist's account of his own experience, fictionalized only by a sense, perhaps inflated, of that experience's romance. And yet to criticize this book for its weaknesses as a novel in itself trivializes its mission. As the genocide inexorably engulfs Valcourt and Gentille, the truth of Courtemanche's political outrage comes to eclipse the falseness of his romance. By novel's end, Courtemanche will have used fiction's unique capacity to imaginatively adopt the viewpoints of others to show us the reality of what happened in Rwanda more intimately than journalism ever could. Sunday is less a novel than a kind of fictionalized witnessing, and in the end where it goes wrong is less important than where it goes right. To read the book alongside, for example, Philip Gourevitch's investigation of the Rwandan genocide is to glimpse the limitations of journalism, even inspired journalism, next to the enormous moral depth of which fiction is capable. The cri de coeur at its center is so necessary, so heartfelt and so deeply convincing that I think it fair to say that one cannot consider one's awareness of the Rwandan Genocide sufficiently profound without reading this book, or something like like this book, just as one cannot consider a moral education in the Holocaust complete without reading the classic works of Holocaust fiction. In the end, nothing else matters about this remarkable book. Reviewed by Neil GordonCopyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
In recounting the 1994 massacre of Rwanda's Tutsis by the majority Hutus, Courtemanche fictionalizes the thoughts and actions of real participants, but the horrors he describes were all too real. At the story's center lies the improbable love that blossoms between Canadian journalist Bernard Valcourt and Gentille, a shy Hutu waitress at Kigali's Mille-Collines Hotel. Valcourt and Gentille speak out against the brutal attacks that presage the genocide but make no headway with corrupt police, impotent UN forces, oblivious Western media outlets, and postcolonial Belgians and French who helped sow the seeds of racial superiority in Rwanda and then retreated when they bore deadly fruit. It's a powerful political novel about important world issues, which hardly ensures an audience here. As Valcourt notes, "In my country the sickness is complacency. In France it's arrogance, and in the United States it's ignorance." That this book would introduce many U.S. readers to events that killed some 800,000 people underscores how fatal our willful ignorance of foreign affairs can be to the world's powerless. Frank Sennett
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Haunting, graceful . . . with a journalist’s unblinking eye and an appreciation of bitter irony.” —The New York Times

“Harrowing, cinematic. . . . Styled after Conrad, Camus, and Greene . . . it gets to you, slithers into your dreams like the original snake in the Edenic hill country of central Africa.” —Elle

“[A] wonderfully rich portrait of fear and love in the face of atrocity . . . chillingly evocative . . . This land of the dying comes alive.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Harrrowing. . . . A brilliant book full of rage and sorrow.” --The Baltimore Sun


“Remarkable. . . . Courtemanche . . . [uses] fiction’s unique capacity to imaginatively adopt the viewpoints of others to show us the reality of what happened in Rwanda more intimately than journalism ever could. . . . One cannot consider one’s awareness of the Rwanda Genocide sufficiently profound without reading this book.” —Washington Post

“The novel of the year. . . . A fresco with humanist accents which could easily find a place next to the works of Albert Camus and Graham Greene.” —La Presse

“Astonishing. . . . Moving, comic and horrifying all at once. . . . Courtemanche’s novel conveys the pressure of lived experience very powerfully; yet at the same time experience is clearly meditated by a sophisticated literary imagination. . . . The first great novel of the catastrophe that befell the country.” —The Guardian

“Compelling. . . . [Like] a report from the front lines. . . . Courtemanche, like his journalist hero, keeps the memory of [the Rwandan genocide] alive with his words.” —Boston Globe

“This is where Courtemanche is most powerful: he’s not afraid to question morality, nor to reveal the human condition in all its heinous inhumanity. The story is intense and gut-wrenching . . . poetic and disquieting.” —The Observer

“Illuminating and horrifying, compassionate and scathing. . . . Despite the harrowing subject matter of the novel, Courtemanche sustains a composed narrative voice of grim detachment. The effect is chilling.” —Times Literary Supplement

“Evokes humanity in all its depth and breadth. . . . Through a felicitous mix of reportage and fiction, Courtemanche has powerfully portrayed a lucid character deeply engaged in a humanist quest.” —Le Journal de Montreal

“Powerful. . . . Written with brutal earthiness and a tender, sensual transcendence.” —Toronto Globe & Mail

“Excellent. . . .Urgent and nervewrackingly ominous, with a surprisingly boisterous humour but, mostly, it leaves a numb shock.” –Financial Times

“This novel is not only powerful and beautifully written. Corrosive, denunciatory, A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali also evokes the powerlessness and the complicity that permitted the [Rwandan] massacre to take place.” —Le Devoir

Review
?Courtemanche has written a novel that contains the kind of social criticism that still, almost 10 years after the terrible events, is sharp and pertinent. . . . The journalist in him has, thankfully, emptied himself, heart and all, into a love story full of real people that demand to be remembered.? -- Quill & Quire

?A fresco with humanist accents which could easily find a place next to the works of Albert Camus and Graham Greene.? -- La Presse

?Brilliant, anguished and righteous?. There are many unsettling qualities to Gil Courtemanche?s extraordinary novel. But above all, it is his insistence on love, and the right to live one?s life passionately and well, even in the face of AIDS and the genocide, this double helix of devastating African tragedies, that make this book great.? -- National Post

?A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a Heart of Darkness for today?. I don?t know what reader will read this book without feeling in some way morally tested.? Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi

?This novel is not only powerful and beautifully written. Corrosive, denunciatory, Un dimanche à la piscine à Kigali also evokes the powerlessness and the complicity that permitted the [Rwandan] massacre to take place.? -- Le Devoir

?A voice that evokes humanity in all its depth and breadth, where executioner and victim are brother and sister, where death is a daily occurrence. A voice I implore you to listen to.... Through a felicitous mix of reportage and fiction, Courtemanche has powerfully portrayed a lucid character deeply engaged in a humanist quest?. The many facets of Bernard Valcourt?s eye constitute the richest prism of the book since he so ably expresses the complex malaise that can be the fate of a western white man faced with Rwandan culture in full decline.? -- Le Journal de Montreal

?A strong, assured voice?speaking of present day and tragic realities: AIDS and the Rwandan genocide?sicknesses of body and spirit with which men and women live, love, die and triumph.... A novel stuck on reality that nevertheless transcends it. You will recognize places and characters. You will recognize the mugginess of the climate. But Courtemanche?s fiction transmits the depth of the real better than any objective documentation.? -- Relations

?Those who read this novel -- and I hope they will be numerous -- are in for some astonishing pages on the subject of love and death.? -- David Homel, Books in Canada

?Exceptional.? -- Jean-Paul Dubois, Le Nouvel Observateur

?A captivating first novel...Gil Courtemanche?s fine writing and refined style... weave together a love story full of beauty and tenderness.? -- Voir

?A first novel whose story hits hard, very hard.? -- Le Droit

?A tremendous novel.? -- René Homier-Roy, Radio Canada/C?est bien meilleur le matin

?A few pages are enough for you to be swept away into the terrifying madness of a country.? -- Le Nouvel Observateur

?When your first novel is compared to the works of Albert Camus, André Malrauz and Graham Greene, it?s a pretty good start. The book is set in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, just before the genocide of the Tutsis at the hands of the Hutu-led government. There is a sense of disaster foretold as these men and women, white and black, play out their last days around a hotel swimming pool in a city that will soon become a graveyard. Courtemanche?s novel is guided by a strong moral presence: that of the author. He has an astringent personality, and he puts it to good use in this book...? -- The Gazette

?Journalist Courtemanche follows in Graham Greene?s footsteps to create popular work that distinguishes itself on the literary scene.? -- David Homel, Enycyclopedia Brittanica

?A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a blunt, vividly visual account of a human cataclysm that has left a scar on the psyche of us all. At the same time it is a testament to love, its durabilility and frailty in the face of annihilation. Do not expect it to leave you untouched.? -- Jonathan Kaplan, author of The Dressing Station

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review from Discover Great New Writers
The Mille-Collines Hotel is hub to the Rwandan elite: Aid workers, diplomats, and other central figures in the disrupted African country pass important days and nights there in the care of bartenders, waitresses, and prostitutes. Bernard Valcourt, a Canadian widower producing a film about the AIDS epidemic, has arrived at the height of Rwanda's civil unrest, and is bewitched by a young Hutu girl, Gentille. When Gentille discovers that Bernard's attraction to her is deeper than lust, the two begin a life-changing affair in a country where sex and death go hand in hand. But as the couple prepare to be married, Rwanda erupts in unmitigated violence. Attempting to flee, the two are separated, leaving Valcourt frantic to find his lover.

Valcourt's search uncovers unspeakable atrocities -- Rwanda itself appears to have been ravished. His hope nearly extinguished as he seeks the truth about Gentille, Valcourt's account of this country's gruesome history is almost beyond comprehension. A fluent foray into the plight of Rwanda, Courtemanche's imagery -- often delightful, sometimes chilling -- is richly descriptive, conveying a challenging story with naked realism and appropriate compassion that refuses to capitulate to sentimentality. A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali is a gripping story of a love built against the odds that drives steadily to a startling conclusion, revealing a writer with a conscience and a novel that demands to be read. (Fall 2003 Selection)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The swimming pool of the Mille-Collines hotel is a magnet for a motley group of Kigali residents: aid workers, Rwandan bourgeoisie, expatriates and prostitutes. Among these patrons is the hotel waitress, Gentille, a beautiful Hutu often mistaken for a Tutsi, who has long been admired by Bernard Valcourt, a foreign journalist.

As the two slide into a love affair and prepare for their wedding, we see the world around them coming apart as the Hutu-led genocide against the Tutsi people begins. Tensions mount, friends are brutally murdered and unbridled violence takes over. Gentille and Valcourt attempt to flee the country to safety but are separated - and it will be months before Valcourt learns of Gentille's shocking fate.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

A well-observed...haunting, graceful book.—Janet Maslin

Publishers Weekly

Bernard Valcourt is a Canadian journalist in Rwanda planning a film on the local AIDS epidemic when he falls in love with Gentille, a Tutsi who works at his hotel at the time of the Hutu-led genocides. Chronicling the days of the government-sponsored atrocities, Courtemanche's novel is powerful in its ability to remind us how much the myth of race has done to divide and destroy the human species in the past hundred years. At the same time, however, it strains to position itself as a sort of neo-existentialist tome, quoting Camus and echoing The Plague. Valcourt describes himself without irony as "sophisticated... an enlightened humanist," and yet his childish self-pity and bitter refusal to accept life's harsh realities are less the trappings of a great intellectual than the alcoholic he obviously is. From the swimming pool terrace of the H tel des Mille-Collines in Kigali, he observes the rapidly deteriorating situation, "rather like a buzzard on a branch... waiting for a scrap of life to excite him." His supposedly spiritual love for Gentille is intended to redeem him, but it most often takes the form of a rhapsody over her "perfect" body. The Rwanda painted by Courtemanche (a Canadian journalist himself) is a country bloodied by ignorance, hatred, sexual obsession and lust for power, as terrifying and darkly obscene as anything imaginable. Tragic and deeply touching at turns (and illuminating from an historical perspective), the novel is nevertheless cheapened by Valcourt's muddled sentimentalizing and adolescent grandiloquence. As Einstein said, everything is either meaningless or miraculous. Most often it's romantics who, becoming cynics, embrace the former. (Oct. 14) Forecast: The best book on the Rwanda genocide is still Philip Gourevitch's nonfiction work We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, but Courtemanche's novel should stimulate lively debate and serve as useful supplementary reading. Rights have been sold in 13 countries, and movie production is underway with Lyla Films. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Rwanda in the 1990s is as daunting a setting for a novel as one could choose, but Canadian journalist Courtemanche uses his time there to craft a compelling examination of humanity's heart of darkness. Through the eyes of his alter ego, Bernard Valcourt, we are given tribal genocide, murder, rape, and intentional HIV infection in unsparing detail. Valcourt falls in love with a young Rwandan he meets at his hotel's swimming pool, and their troubled plight drives the plot through a landscape of chaos. Though this is fiction, Courtemanche sticks to the public record, depicting the Hutu-led brutality against the Tutsi in a simultaneously frenzied and mundane manner. Sex and death are so entwined that a dying man's mother encourages a young woman to gratify him sexually before he passes, and in another scene a man rejoices when he finds out he will be executed after having sex with his wife in front of his tormentors. Despite the horror, there are parallel, if less frequent, moments of camaraderie, compassion, and selfless love. Winner of Canada's Prix des libraires du Qu bec in 2000, this book is recommended for all public and academic libraries.-Edward Keane, Long Island Univ. Lib., Brooklyn Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews