Abstract
This article examines Quebecois author Kevin Lambert’s debut novel, Tu aimeras ce que tu as tué, a disquieting story of slaughtered children who come back to the Canadian town of Chicoutimi to live normal lives in it before destroying it. The apocalyptic dimension of this tale of destruction lives up to the etymological root of apocalypse, apokalyptein (“to uncover, disclose, reveal” in Greek) by centering the narrative around a revelation of the violence that is inherent to heteronormative culture but occulted by its position of dominance. This violence, which targets the figure of the innocent child, the standard-bearer of heterosexuality in its reproductive futurity, is, through the prophetic rage of the narrator, a child named Faldistoire, turned back upon the respectable adults who stamp out not only the lives of children but their nonnormative desires and impulses—their freedom. The novel puts forth apocalypse as a model for the work of literature itself—revelation that rends normative reality in order to replace it with something else.
