The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Pierre Before Bill
By Patrick Doyle
Published by the author, 2025 (2024)
Five stars

This is the third of Canadian author Patrick Doyle’s books about Pierre and Bill. It is also, oddly enough, the prequel, taking us back to the 1970s, when Pierre Tremblay was a runaway teenager from far-northern rural Quebec.

Patrick Doyle is a wonderful writer, and his books are entirely about love, both the search for love and the results of love. They are not, however, romances, in spite of the plethora of romantic moments that enrich his narratives. I guess that makes Doyle’s books gay literature. It also makes them ring very true.

This book I found particularly powerful, because it completes our picture of Pierre, giving us the full arc of his experience as a gay man in Canada—a Canada far harsher and more unwelcoming than the one we Americans imagine. I also connected with Pierre’s story because he is exactly my age, coming out in the 1970s and experiencing the changing world from then until the present day over the course of the three books. His story is entirely different from mine, and that’s exactly why reading it meant so much to me.

“Pierre Before Bill” does have a happy ending, but that happiness is neither predictable nor easily found. I’ll also note that the Bill of the title is not who you think he might be, and that is one of the unexpected joys that make this book—and its two sequels—so special.

We meet Pierre on the road somewhere in the middle of Canada, as he is about to climb into the cab of a massive cross-country tractor-trailer (eighteen-wheeler). The driver is Ed, who seems very old to young Pierre. Together they start an adventure together that is a study in tenderness, offering a clear-eyed dissection of a culture in which being francophone is as stigmatized as being gay is.

Pierre is a brave young man. His unworldliness is almost balanced by his wisdom and common sense, but not completely. His background is just too limited to prepare him for what he encounters along his journey; and yet he manages remarkably well. He starts his adventures knowing almost nothing outside the provincial French-speaking culture in which he was raised. Fortunately, the bar of his expectations is set pretty low, given what he’s running away from. He is innocent, and possibly a little naïve, but he is not stupid. The amazing thing is that, even as he learns painful lessons, he experiences frequent moments of joy at the smallest things. Pierre, knowing that the world is rough, is nonetheless open to the potential for joy wherever he goes. That makes all the difference.

I was in tears (happy tears) by the end of the book, as I saw how Pierre’s first story connected to the two books that follow this one. I recommend all three, but also that you start with this one, in order to watch Pierre’s story unfold.