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This talk shows how the idealism, characterizing the protagonists of Life Sideway/La vie de biais (2008) by Quebec short-story writer Gaëtan Brulotte, is subverted. Faced with concrete realities that take on the form of materialsim, the body, sexualtiy and disease, the main characters are disillusioned at the end of the stories, which all contain a subtext criticizing religion. Playing on Blaise Pascal’s description of the human condition whereby one ironically becomes a beast when trying to act like an angel, Brulotte shows through his stories that he is still rebelling against the religious discourse that he faced while growing up in Quebec. In our opinion, the subtle criticism of the Church in Brulotte’s collection, which deals explicitly with trends and events related to the turn of the 21st century, demonstrates its Quebecois specificity and is ultimately related to the short-story as a literary genre.