Marie-Eve Quintal had arrived late, to the great dismay of Sébastien who’d been watching for her since he got off the bus. All the children were concentrating on their glue and cut paper when the door opened to let in Marie-Eve, pretty and tanned after a week in Florida with her grandparents, and more in love with Sébastien than ever. She’d made a beeline for him, before she even took off her snowsuit, and planted on his cheek a wet kiss that still smelled of ­chocolate milk. He kissed her in turn—a drier, more discreet embrace—and told her excitedly, holding out both arms towards her, all his fingers wide apart:

“Know how many mummies I’ve got! Lots and lots and lots. That many!”

About Talonbooks

Thank you for purchasing and reading The Heart Laid Bare. If you came across this ebook by some other means, feel free to purchase it and support our hard work. It is available through most major online ebook retailers and on our website. The print edition is also available.

Talonbooks is a small, independent, Canadian book publishing company. We have been publishing works of the highest literary merit since the 1960s. With more than 500 books in print, we offer drama, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by local playwrights, poets, and authors from the mainstream and margins of Canada’s three founding nations, as well as both visible and invisible minorities within Canada’s cultural mosaic.

Learn more about us or about the author, Michel Tremblay, and his many works.

Copyright © 1986 Michel Tremblay

Translation copyright © 1989 Sheila Fischman

Talonbooks

P.O. Box 2076, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6B 3S3

Cover design by Adam Swica.

First Printing: February 2002
Electronic edition: February 2015

First published in French in 1986 as Le coeur découvert by Les Editions Leméac, Montreal. First published in English in 1989 as The Heart Laid Bare by McClelland & Stewart, Toronto. A second English edition was ­published in 1990 as Making Room by Serpent’s Tail in London, U.K.

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

ISBN 978-0-88922-962-4

The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program; and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council for our publishing activities.