With this astounding fourth novel in her ongoing series of contemporary
masterpieces (These Festive Nights, Thunder and Light, Augustino
and the Choir of Destruction, and Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom),
Marie-Claire Blais invites us again to enter a complex circle of
unforgettable characters. But this time, the tone is different: Blais'
writing has acquired a new, buoyant, electrifying rhythm -- a rhythm
some critics have described as the heartbeat of the world.
As we follow a central character named Rebecca, the voice in the novel
becomes the voice of the world inventing itself, and the future playing
itself out. As the GG jury wrote, this breathtaking paroxysm of a novel
turns any commonly held vision of the world upside down. Blais'
transcendent prose illuminates her characters with an extraordinary
light.
Nigel Spencer is Marie-Claire Blais' long-time translator and a Governor
General's Award winner for his work on this series of books. He gives us
Blais' singular vision in supple English prose that is as transcendent
and nuanced as the original French.