Canoes
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- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
Seven interconnected stories orbit a central novella to create a collection of tales which resonate with the sound of women's voices.
A widower struggles to erase his wife's voice from his answering machine. Two old friends meet after a period apart and find they can no longer fit into their habitual rhythm. A woman records herself reading a poem for two sisters who obsessively collect voice recordings.
At the heart of Canoes is "Mustang", in which a woman moves with her family to the suburbs of Denver, where her partner takes up a research post. As her husband and child fit seamlessly into their new lives, she remains aloof, consumed by a feeling of not belonging, and observing as her loved ones change and adapt to these alien surroundings.
In this moving and deeply poetic collection, Maylis de Kerangal casts light on the balance between life and death, exploring the traces we leave upon each other's lives and creating space for women of all ages to be heard.
Translated from the French by Jessica Moore
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
De Kerangal's masterful collection (after Eastbound) examines alienation and grief at pivotal moments in her characters' lives. In "Bivouac," a translator reminisces about her first trip to Paris alone as a teen, where she stayed with her mother's glamorous friend, who lost her fiancé years earlier in a helicopter accident. In the eerie "Nevermore," a voice actor records Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" and encounters a fantastical bird outside the studio. "A Light Bird" centers on a man whose daughter confronts him about needing to delete an answering machine greeting recorded by his now deceased wife. The narrator of "Ontario," having traveled to Toronto for a literary festival, gazes at Lake Ontario from her hotel window and reflects on how she associates the word "lake" with "death" rather than a more appropriate word like "canoe." Each story is richly complex, and the collection's recurring canoe imagery gives it the feel of a treasure map—a dentist wears a canoe pendant in "Bivouac," and the "Nevermore" narrator's voice is described as a "light canoe on a dark ocean"—prompting readers to consider de Kerangal's themes of transience and the flow of memories. This understated volume packs a powerful punch.
