The second volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais's
prize-winning novel cycle -- acclaimed as one of the greatest
undertakings in modern Quebec fiction -- reissued in a handsome A List
edition.
Originally published in 2001, Thunder and Light is the second volume
in Marie-Claire Blais's prize-winning Soifs series, hailed as one of the
greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction. Powered by its
characters' gripping exploration of the world's dark corners, the novel
is a teeming microcosm in which boundaries collapse and the extremes and
contradictions that animate our times are reconciled.
Blais locks us directly into the consciousness of her characters, many
of whom we met in her previous novel, These Festive Nights, and many
that she derives from actual news stories: Jessica, a seven-year-old
attempting to beat the world record as the youngest pilot to cross the
continent; Nathanaël, a teenager on death row for killing his favourite
teacher; Our Lady of the Bags, a modern-day Joan of Arc who lives among
Manhattan's skyscrapers and follows the voices in her head; and Caroline
and Jean-Mathieu, aging artists who are fighting to come together again.
One character's thoughts or actions have consequences for another 3,000
miles away who is a complete stranger to the first.
This is an intricate house of cards, delicately but expertly
constructed, that shocks us in its perversity and familiarity,
ultimately finding hope and redemption in the most human and basic forms
of art.
