Ayant grandi dans l’Église de Jésus-Christ des saints des derniers jours, c’était normal que je m’engage comme missionnaire mormon à l’âge de 19 ans. Comme j’avais déjà beaucoup étudié le français, on m’a affecté au service missionnaire en France et en Suisse, où j’ai donc habité entre 2007 et 2009. Mes souvenirs de cette période de ma vie sont un peu compliqués. Comme je n’ai plus les mêmes croyances religieuses, j’ai certains regrets.

When I took a job at the University of Kentucky, a former professor (and boss) of mine at BYU told me to look up a specific French professor on campus, whom she’d also taught (and supervised) some time earlier. I ran into him several months later at a stake conference (this was, obviously, when I was still attending Latter-day Saint meetings), and we bonded over what it was like to work under our boss.

This volume went back to blah. On one hand, it’s interesting for the way it gives a backstory to a relatively minor character. On the other, it falls into the same trap of wanting to give series villains gruesome backstories as some sort of Freudian excuse. Truth be told, I preferred the minor character as just that. I don’t know that this backstory was consistent with his original portrayal, and it didn’t help me appreciate him any more.