Search results for ""Author Rhonda Mullins""

A fifteenth-century portrait painter, grieving the untimely death of his unrequited love, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France. He haunts the halls until the monks assign him the task of copying manuscripts – though he is illiterate. His work heals him and grows the monastery's library into a beautiful city of books, all under the shadow of the invention of the printing press. Dominique Fortier is an editor and translator living in Montreal. She is the author of five books, including On the Proper Use of Stars and Wonder. Rhonda Mullins is an award-winning translator and writer living in Montreal, Quebec.

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Nineteen Eighty-Four meets Tron, via The Office, in this boldly dystopian novel The agents don’t know what they’re agents of, but they’re very busy agenting, which means watching endless data feeds in their cubicles, cubicles that are piled one on top of another in a massive tower in which the agents both live and work. Empty floors serve as battlefields where different guilds of agents fight for territory. It seems that defenestration is the only way out, the ‘ballet of suicides.’ It is here we meet Théodore, who has amputated his own toes and must maintain a 30-degree angle to keep his balance. And Solveig, who is pregnant, though agents don’t usually have sex, as well as the artist Lazslo and self-mutilating Clara. And then there’s Hick, the new agent, who seems strangely happy and occupies a cubicle that is strategically very important. The battle for key territory is heating up, and the agents aren’t sure which of them will make it out alive. If, indeed, that’s what any of them want… The author of the acclaimed The Laws of the Skies turns his hand from literary horror to futuristic dystopianism in this unforgettable marriage between The Office, Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Tron. “Unflinching in its savagery, the nightmarish poetry of this modern Lord of the Flies is undeniable.” —Publishers Weekly starred review on The Laws of the Skies “A haunting book, if you can keep reading.” —LitHub on The Laws of the Skies “The Law of the Skies is not an easy book to digest . . . but I found it exhilarating to read a novel that’s this unflinching, this nihilistic, and also this deeply profound.” —Locus Magazine

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Winnie-the-Pooh meets The Blair Witch Project in this very grown-up tale of a camping trip gone horribly awry. Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive. The Laws of the Skies tells the harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness and accidents, and a murderous child. Part fairy tale, part horror film, this macabre fable takes us through the minds of all the members of this doomed party, murderers and murdered alike.

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CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 202349th SHELF EDITORS' PICK FOR JUNE 2023When a family is forced to return to the mother’s childhood home, she seeks meaning in her ancestral roots and the violent beauty of the natural world.Fleeing the city at the beginning of the pandemic, two families are cramped together in a small century-old country house. Winter seeps through the walls, the wallpaper is peeling, and mice make their nest in the piano. Without phones or internet, they turn to the outdoors, where a new language unfolds, a language of fireflies and clover. The five children explore nature and its treasures, while our narrator, Anaïs, turns to the eccentric neighbours and her own family history to find peace and meaning in the middle of her life.To the Forest is a field guide to a quieter life, a call to return to the places where we can reweave the threads of memory, where existence waltzes with death, where we can recapture what it means to be alive.

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The lives of three families intersect in the hallways of an apartment block in a Montreal neighborhood. Mélissa, Roxane, and Kevin have never had it easy. As their parents face their own struggles – with addiction, unemployment, and abuse – they must learn to fend for themselves. Though their lives converge at school, on the street, at the corner store, or when they can hear each other through their apartments’ thin walls, they each feel deeply alone. Neighbourhood Watch tells their coming-of-age stories with a cinematic ease, moving between despair and the unalterable hope of childhood. With her characteristic poetic flair and generosity, Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette, author of the acclaimed Suzanne, has painted, in brief strokes, an unforgettable and moving portrait of a fictional apartment block in Montreal. This translation of her 2010 debut novel is presented with an afterword interview with a woman who, as a child, was the inspiration behind the character of Roxane. ‘This is prose to lose yourself in. Never complicated, it’s gentle like a love song, comforting and enveloping like a black-and-white film, full of tones and textures. These sentences can destroy us. Not for their simplicity, but for the powerful beauty within the simplicity.’ —Peter McCambridge, ‘Best Translated Book Award: Why This Book Should Win,’ on Suzanne

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CBC BOOKS - CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023Peter Greenaway meets Angela Carter: a Gothic tale of secrets and revenge When the curtain rises on Malmaison, it reveals a once-enchanting estate, quietly falling into darkness and ruin, and at the heart of it, a father, one of a long line of fathers who have flourished at the expense of those around them. The silence seems peaceful, but lurking under it is a deep malevolence, scores of ugly and violent secrets kept by cast-off mistresses and abandoned daughters. Ever-greedy, the father brings in Aliénor, a woman who promises to make the lands give even more of themselves; the plants will flourish, the animals will multiply, each feast will be more sumptuous than the last. The father thinks the stage is set to satisfy his every desire, but Aliénor will bring a new script, one in which the hunters are hunted and a new reign will begin.

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Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette never knew her mother’s mother. Curious to understand why her grandmother, Suzanne, a sometime painter and poet associated with Les Automatistes, a movement of dissident artists that included Paul-Émile Borduas, abandoned her husband and young family, Barbeau-Lavalette hired a private detective to piece together Suzanne’s life.Suzanne, winner of the Prix des libraires du Québec and a bestseller in French, is a fictionalized account of Suzanne’s life over eighty-five years, from Montreal to New York to Brussels, from lover to lover, through an abortion, alcoholism, Buddhism, and an asylum. It takes readers through the Great Depression, Québec's Quiet Revolution, women’s liberation, and the American civil rights movement, offering a portrait of a volatile, fascinating woman on the margins of history. And it’s a granddaughter’s search for a past for herself, for understanding and forgiveness.‘It’s about a nameless despair, an unbearable sadness. But it’s also a reflection on what it means to be a mother, and an artist. Most of all, it’s a magnificent novel.’– Les MéconnusAnaïs Barbeau-Lavalette is a Montreal-based author and director. She was named the 2012 Artist for Peace by the social justice organization Les Artistes Pour la Paix.Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montréal. She received the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Les héritiers de la mine.

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It's a quirky sort of historical fiction set in the mid–19th century, during the Spanish-Peruvian/Chilean War. Told in the third person omniscient, it mostly follows an unambitious ship's recorder named Simón, who goes to Peru on what is called a scientific expedition, but is really an attempt (maybe) by Isabella II to reassert her power over her colonies. The language of the novel is extravagant; in contrast, Simón's records of the trip, and of the political machinations between Spain and Peru are the opposite. Throughout, the tone of the book is sometimes mocking, sometimes ironic, rarely the grandiose descriptions you get in a tale of war. It's a weird book — anything but your typical historical fiction, and unlike anything CH has ever published. Winner of the Prix des Collégiens (2014), whose jury is composed by 800 college students. Rhonda Mullins's translation of Jocelyne Saucier's And the Birds Rained Down was shortlisted for CBC Canada Reads (2015) and the Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English Translation (2013).

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Finalist for the Governor General's Award for Best Translation from French to English A translation of acclaimed writer Jocelyne Saucier's Les héritiers de la mine, originally published in French by Les Editions XYZ. Jocelyne Saucier's first novels, La vie comme une image and Jeanne sur les routes, were finalists for the Governor General’s Award. Her third novel, Il pleuvait des oiseaux, garnered her the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, making her the first Canadian to win the award. Rhonda Mullins has been nominated twice for the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation (most recently for her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's And the Birds Rained Down) -- you know what they say about third times and charms!

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Longlisted for the 2022 DUBLIN Literary AwardA woman must emerge from the virtual world she’s created to confront her flesh-and-blood past and family. Growing up with a menacing drunk for a father and a grief-stricken mother, a girl spends her 1980s childhood staring at the television to escape the tension, depression, and looming violence that fill her suburban home. After winning a modelling competition, she dedicates herself to becoming a placid image onto which anything can be projected, a blank slate with a blank stare. Earning enough in Paris to retire in her twenties, she buys a studio in Montreal and retreats from the world and its perceived threats, cultivating her existence as an image through her virtual reality avatar. But when her mother develops cancer and nears the end of her life, she is forced to leave her cocoon – surrounded by her posse of augmented reality superheroes – and interact with the world and her parents without the mask of her perfect, virtual self. Georges offers up an alienated childhood with shifting pop culture obsessions, a woman’s awakening to the role of the image in culture, and her eventual isolation in her apartment and the world online. It is a catalogue of the anxieties of an age, from nuclear war to terrorism, climate change to biological warfare. Set in the past and not-too-distant future of Montreal, The Imago Stage is an ominous tale of oppression, suppression, and disembodiment.

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Ana and her son, Philippe, are grieving the loss of Philippe's father when Ana's hairstylist Kimi dies in an apparent suicide. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ana starts digging into Kimi's past in Guyana in 1978, which leads to nested tales of north and south, past and present, and to the Jonestown Massacre. A stunning translation of a masterpiece by one of Quebec's most important novelists. Elise Turcotte is a novelist and award-winning poet who has twice received the Prix Emile-Nelligan. Rhonda Mullins was a finalist for the 2007 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation and translated Jocelyne Saucier's And the Birds Rained Down.

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Away From Her meets Strangers on a Train in this follow-up to cult bestseller And the Birds Rained Down "A journey as geographical as it is interior... a bumpy route, but one punctuated by contemplative pleasures, by small, lost joys... Simultaneously introspective and captivating, [And Miles to Go Before I Sleep...] reconnects us to what is essential." —Les Libraires “Nostalgic and beautifully grotesque, this novel is delightfully baroque and, although short, so striking it simply will never leave you.” —The Coast, on And the Birds Rained Down "Cleaving closely to the award-winning Jocelyne Saucier novel on which it’s based, this eco-friendly, elegantly delivered tale about the sunset changes in the lives of a trio of graybeards living in the woods is engaging, thought-provoking and ultimately moving." –The Hollywood Reporter, on the film adaptation of And the Birds Rained Down After And The Birds Rained Down, a stunning meditation on aging and freedom (with more than 3,000 Goodreads ratings), Jocelyne Saucier is back with this unsettling story about a woman’s disappearance. Gladys might look old and frail, but she is determined to finish her life on her own terms. And so, one September morning, she leaves Swastika, her home of the past fifty years, and hops on the Northlander train, eager to put thousands of miles of northern Quebec between her and the improbably named village, and leaving behind her perennially tormented daughter, Lisana. Our mysterious narrator, who is documenting these disappearing northern trains, is on a quest to uncover the truth of Gladys’s voyage, tracking down fellow passengers and train employees to learn what happened to Gladys and her daughter, and why.

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Emily Dickinson is as famous for being a recluse as she is for her poetry. In this stunning novel, we see her struggling to reconcile spirit and flesh, preferring letters and reflecting that the only way to have books and life is to live through one’s own writing. Dominique Fortier brings Dickinson vividly to life, as if reanimating a flower that had been pressed in a book, through her reflections on language and what it feels like to be home.

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