Happiness Has a Slippery Tail

This novel paints the portrait of a Lebanese family that has settled in Montreal. The central figure is Dounia, a 75-year-old mother and grandmother. Hers is a story of loss—she first leaves her own village to live in her husband’s hometown, and then is wrenched from her homeland, not once but twice, to live in a strange land whose language and customs are foreign to her.

Dounia can neither read nor write, and she speaks only Arabic. Illiterate yet perceptive, nourished by Lebanese proverbs...