BC Books Online was created for anyone interested in BC-published books, and with librarians especially in mind. We'd like to make it easy for library staff to learn about books from BC publishers - both new releases and backlist titles - so you can inform your patrons and keep your collections up to date.
Our site features print books and ebooks - both new releases and backlist titles - all of which are available to order through regular trade channels. Browse our subject categories to find books of interest or create and export lists by category to cross-reference with your library's current collection.
A quick tip: When reviewing the "Browse by Category" listings, please note that these are based on standardized BISAC Subject Codes supplied by the books' publishers. You will find additional selections, grouped by theme or region, in our "BC Reading Lists."
Somewhere in Montreal, in the not too distant future, an obscure company offers custom-designed suicides for its clients with one condition: their desire to die must be pure and absolute. Antoinette Beauchamp is a successful candidate but her suicide is not. Now a bedridden paraplegic, hooked up to machines that monitor all her bodily functions, she tells her story, taking the reader into the Kafkaesque world of the company and its bewildering cast of characters. 'Exit' is at once a profound examination of what it is that drives someone to want to end their life, as well as how that urge can be turned on its head against all odds. Written with her signature brio and acerbic wit, Nelly Arcan's last novel is a hymn to life.
"[The protagonist's] voice is thoroughly belligerent, as she mercilessly explains why she is bent on pursuing hopelessness, ugliness, all that is antithetical to life, and what it means to exist without that strength of will to desire, to discover, to love,to believe'... Ultimately, though, 'Exit' is a strangely hopeful novel..." - Canadian Literature
"This book plucked the brain from my skull and punted it through the uprights of remembering what writing can be like when a true artist unleashes her talent, passion and fearlessness in a book. No false compromises here. No half-steps. Just a rigorous exercise in ethics and contemporary morals wrapped in humour, helplessness and the absurd. For a book about suicide the writing is tight, energetic, rigorous ... This book will be on my best of the year list." - Sean Cranbury, Books on the Radio
"A powerful argument for suicide as a human right, 'Exit' is also strangely life-affirming. Ordinarily, these contradictory positions could suffice as the motor of a plot. Arcan's protagonist is the irascible, narcissistic Antoinette Beauchamp, who seeks strength and reason to live from within the depths of her own twisted psychology. Knowing that the young woman who wrote this outrageously beautiful, thoroughly original novel did not is, well, heartbreaking. Cruel, even. So 'Exit' and the late Nelly Arcan's life are a package. In the end, though, I only thought of Nelly Arcan. How could she have had this book inside her, let it out, and still leave us? Great beauty can be found in very dark places." -The Rover
Govenor General's Award Finalist
The Globe 100: The very best of 2011
Nelly Arcan was born in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Her first novel 'Putain' (2001; English) 'Whore' (2004), drawing on her experience working in the sex trade in Montreal, caused a sensation and enjoyed immediate critical and media success. It was a finalist for both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina, two of France's most prestigious literary awards. Three more novels followed, establishing her as a literary star in Quebec and France: 'Folle (2004), also nominated for the Prix Femina, ' à ciel ouvert' (2007), and 'L'enfant dans le miroir' (2007). 'Paradis, clef en main' was her fourth novel and was completed just before she committed suicide at the age of thirty-six.
David Scott Hamilton has a degree in linguistics and French, and has worked as a freelance translator since 1995, producing significant works for numerous clients, including the Canadian Museum of Civilization. He divides his time between Chambéry, France, and Vancouver, B.C.