Sillery is presented through two closely connected family sites: Isabelle D’Anjou’s home and the D’Anjou family vault in the cemetery. The novel gives little civic description of the locality; instead, it anchors Sillery in the private strain of a family crisis and in the quieter act of burial after a public funeral.

Home and Private Anxiety

In her house in Sillery, Isabelle spends a long time biting her nails as she wrestles with whether to seek news about her husband, Roger Bolduc. She fears the questions her father might ask and considers going through her mother instead, as she usually does. Her uncertainty is sharpened by Loïc’s dream and by her fear that further inquiry could bring concealed matters into the open. The house is thus tied to a private crisis: Isabelle wants to know what happened to Roger, yet is frightened of what the answer might expose.

When Loïc later calls again, anxious for news of Roger and wishing to describe the stone he glimpsed in his dream, Isabelle recognizes his number and does not answer. Her earlier hesitation has become a refusal to speak with him. The Sillery home is the setting for this withdrawal, while the novel leaves the specific secrets she fears undisclosed in this episode.

Burial and Family Memory

Sillery is also the location of the D’Anjou family cemetery vault. After Régis’s funeral at a basilica in Québec, he is interred there in a more modest ceremony. The contrast separates public recognition from family burial: the funeral is conducted with great pomp and attended by the premiers of Québec and Canada, while the final interment takes place in the family vault at Sillery.

Loïc avoids standing with the D’Anjou family in the front rows at the funeral, unwilling to make his grief a public display. He also feels the family’s barely concealed hostility and ultimately keeps to himself the posthumous postcards he has received from Régis. The burial place therefore belongs to a family memory marked not only by loss, but also by strained kinship and withheld knowledge.

Narrative Significance

The novel’s limited, specific use of Sillery gives the place a domestic and familial meaning rather than a broad civic portrait. Isabelle’s house holds her fear of discovery; the cemetery vault receives Régis after a public farewell. Together, these sites frame the tension between what the family experiences privately and what it presents to the outside world.