Written by Emma Rhodes

Marie-Claire Blais is regarded as one of Canada’s most renowned authors, revered among the likes of Margaret Atwood, and often compared to Virginia Woolf in her extremely skillful stream-of-consciousness style of writing. There is a long list of ways Blais was a pioneer throughout her career, but here are just some: her tone and style of writing is unique and immediately recognizable as hers; she was a queer woman writing LGBTQIA+ fiction from the 1960s; she was a francophone Canadian writer reaching international success; and the way she challenged ideas of morality in each of her books, tasking readers to exercise empathy in areas they might not want to, leaves her with a legacy of absolutely unforgettable writing.

Blais was twenty years old when she published her first book, Mad Shadows, in 1959, which received passionate and mixed reviews, but by 1965 she was already being called “a true ‘phenomenon’” and possibly “a genius,” by American critic Edmund Wilson. It was just after this book that Blais landed her first two Guggenheim fellowships. “Genius” is a word you’ll come across a lot when looking into Marie-Claire Blais.

Since 1965, Blais has won four Governor General’s Literary Awards and several Guggenheim fellowships, among myriad other awards and accolades. House of Anansi had the honour of publishing the English translations of her iconic Soifs Cycle for two decades, through to the end of Blais’s life. And so, to celebrate this year’s Women in Translation Month, we dug through the Marie-Claire Blais archives. Here’s what we found:

1997

For fun, let’s start with a look at book promotion, with this invite to the launch of These Festive Nights:

It’s interesting looking back at Blais’s legacy and the areas in which she’s deemed iconic, because Blais herself did not want to be pigeonholed as anything—not a gay writer, nor a Quebecois writer, but just a writer. She was in a league all her own, and she paved the way for other LGBTQIA+ writers, francophone writers, women writers, and writers of experimental and literary fiction.

1998

Have a look at this old marketing plan! “Will not be sending out advance material. Style of writing would be impossible to break up.” Instead of print or digital ARCs, we used to send excerpts to media through snail mail—but Marie-Claire Blais’s writing is impossible to separate into portions. 

These Festive Nights made a big splash with both scathing and glowing reviews. Canadian author and columnist John Moore said in a review that was syndicated in newspapers across Canada:

“If this is the best Canadian writers have to offer at the fin de siècle, take 200 Tylenol and call me after the turn of the century.”

WOAH! We just don’t get scathing reviews like this anymore. Despite the mixed reception, These Festive Nights won the Governor General’s Award for French Fiction (1996), and the Quebec Writers’ Federation Award in Translation (1999).

2001

Here’s a press release for Blais’s next book in the Soifs Cycle, Thunder and Light, this time translated by Nigel Spencer.The Toronto Star called this novel “more lightning than light.” But Lorna Jackson, in a STARRED review from Quill & Quire, wrote that “without the challenges of books like [Blais’s,] readers, too, may become spoiled by success, too impatient and lazy to do the hard work some reading rewards.”

2002

2002 was a big awards year for Nigel Spencer and Blais, with another Governor General’s award—this time for the translation! Spencer was lauded for “daring to punctuate” Blais, which he did with skill and “great care.”

2009

Jumping ahead in time just a little bit, with Marie-Claire Blais now sixty-nine years old and having already made a strong name for herself, The Walrus published a piece titled “How to Read a Masterpiece.” In it, Marianne Ackerman asked if it’s possible that Marie-Claire Blais can be both a genius and unreadable. She came to this conclusion: “There is only one way to read [Marie-Claire Blais]. Slowly … Once it all starts to make sense, you feel utterly grateful and deeply connected, in tune with humanity, mesmerized, ready to go on and on.”

Interviewed in this same article, a number of readers and publishers familiar with Blais said she’s “a monument” and “a supreme stylist. A writer like no other writer this country has ever produced.” 

2021

Marie-Claire Blais died at the age of eighty-two in the year 2021. Upon her passing, she was honoured across French and English Canada, and in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

Blais spent sixty years writing truly groundbreaking fiction that left readers inspired, “mesmerized,” and forever changed. For years after her passing, readers would contact House of Anansi asking when the final book in the Soifs Cycle,Together by the Sea, would be published for English readers. She left with a monumental legacy.

2026

In 2026, with Together by the Sea (translated by Katia Grubisic) published in English posthumously, Emily Donaldson looked back on the series in the Globe and Mail.

Donaldson concludes that people should read Marie-Claire Blais for the same reason that they probably won’t. “To try holding multiple ideas in your head, grapple with the ambiguous language, navigate alternative forms of storytelling and be okay, sometimes, with not fully understanding what you’re reading.”

For this to be the final lesson of Blais’s writing takes me back to her early reception. Let us, as readers, not become too “spoiled” to do the hard work of not understanding. If we don’t let ourselves be a little lost, we’ll never find our way to something special on the other side.