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list price: $22.95
edition:Paperback
category: Fiction
published: Apr 2009
ISBN:9781553654094
publisher: Douglas & McIntyre

Wildlives

A Novel

by Monique Proulx, translated by Fred Reed & David Homel

tagged: literary
Description

A powerful, gently surreal tale of a community at the edge of the modern world.

On the fringes of a small town in the Laurentians lives a community of misfits. There's Lila, the landlady of the forest who shoulders a terrible guilt; the young, beautiful and carefree Violette, who bears deep childhood scars, and the boy Jeremy, who whispers his confessions to the frogs and ants in the forest. There's Claire, who writes murder scenes, and Simon, who cares for his brother's son while pining for various women.

 

Each character has come to this forgiving Eden to escape some private trauma; forced to interact through loneliness and proximity, they learn each othersí secrets, with stunning consequences.

 

Told from the perspective of each character, shifting between the past and the present, Wildlives takes the reader on a fantasy ride of intrigue and character exploration. With its existential mystery, evocation of unspoiled nature and spectacular characters, the novel brings to mind Paul Auster, Henry David Thoreau and Isabelle Allende.

About the Authors
Monique Proulx is one of Quebec’s most popular authors. A novelist, story writer and screenwriter, she has published six works of fiction, including Sex of the Stars, The Invisible Man at the Window, Aurora Montrealis, The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle, which was a finalist for the 2002 Governor General’s Award for fiction (French language) and a selection for the 2004 CBC Canada Reads competition, and Wildlives. She also won the 1993 Prix Qu�bec-Paris, le Signet d’Or de Plaisir de lire, le Prix des libraires du Qu�bec and le Prix litt�raire Desjardins. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

International journalist and award-winning literary translator Fred A. Reed is a respected specialist on politics in the Middle East. He has reported extensively on Middle Eastern affairs for La Presse, CBC Radio-Canada and Le Devoir. He currently resides in Quebec.

David Homel is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and translator, and the author of nine novels. He has translated many French-language books into English and is a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation. He lives in Montreal.

Awards
  • , Governor Generals' Literary Award - Translation
  • , Quebec Writers' Federation Translation Prize
Editorial Reviews

"This is a book to savor on summer afternoons in the country...[Proulx] plunges into the Laurentian landscape in this multi-faceted novel."

— Montreal Review of Books

"[Monique Proulx] has chosen here to venture outside her usual urban settings, to confront the intoxicating, dizzyingly full-of-life region we call, with so little hope of possessing it, Nature."

— Montreal Gazette

"Monique Proulx has created a magical universe in the forest, peopled by characters with whom the reader will have deep sympathy. And in translation, I did not know that I was reading a novel originally written in French."

— Sun Times

"Proulx's writing has a rhythm that mimics nature itself -- sometimes necessarily harsh, at times calm and peaceful, but mostly forgiving and beautiful."

— Globe & Mail

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