White Resin

White Resin

Written by: Wilhelmy, Audrée
Translated by: Ouriou, Susan

White Resin is an ethereal love story of the almost-impossible reconciliation between the manufactured world and the haunting and feminine nature that envelops it.  

In this impassioned and wildly imagined story of creation, a girl named Dãa, is born to “twenty-four mothers,” the sisters of a convent at the edge of the Quebec taiga. Nearby, at the Kohle mining company, a woman dies giving birth to Laure, a child with albinism, in the workers’ canteen. What follows is a dream-like recounting of their love affair and the family they bear, a captivating magic-realist tale of origins and opposites, that would be fantastical if it did not ring so true to the boreal north. White Resin is at once a dream-like romance and an homage to gorgeous, feral, and fecund nature as it both stands against and entwined with the industrial world.

White Resin is an ethereal love story of the almost-impossible reconciliation between the manufactured world and the haunting and feminine nature that envelops it.  

In this impassioned and wildly imagined story of creation, a girl named Dãa, is born to “twenty-four mothers,” the sisters of a convent at the edge of the Quebec taiga. Nearby, at the Kohle mining company, a woman dies giving birth to Laure, a child with albinism, in the workers’ canteen. What follows is a dream-like recounting of their love affair and the family they bear, a captivating magic-realist tale of origins and opposites, that would be fantastical if it did not ring so true to the boreal north. White Resin is at once a dream-like romance and an homage to gorgeous, feral, and fecund nature as it both stands against and entwined with the industrial world.

Published By House of Anansi Press Inc — Sep 7, 2021
Specifications 304 pages | 5.25 in x 8 in
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Excerpt
Written By

AUDRÉE WILHELMY was born in 1985 in Cap-Rouge, Quebec, and now lives in Montreal.She is the winner of France’s Sade Award, has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Prix France-Québec and the Quebec Booksellers Award.

Written By

AUDRÉE WILHELMY was born in 1985 in Cap-Rouge, Quebec, and now lives in Montreal.She is the winner of France’s Sade Award, has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Prix France-Québec and the Quebec Booksellers Award.

Long-listed, Governor General's Literary Award, 2022

“There is something about Audrée Wilhelmy I cannot find anywhere else. It’s in her style, of course. In her method, certainly. In her inventiveness, no doubt. But it goes beyond all that. With Wilhelmy, it lies in the pact she makes with the reader, as if the singularity of the universe she offers us does not come so much from literature, as from witchcraft. An ode to all-powerful freedom: of the body, of the land, of language, and of the feminine.” —Voir.ca

“Like the places she creates, Audrée Wilhelmy’s literary domain is vast and never ceases to dazzle.” —Lettres québécoises

“By means of a demanding and chiseled prose, eminently poetic, rich in neologisms and in borrowings from native and northern European languages ​​(several can be found in a very convenient ‘Lexicon’), Wilhelmy draws us into a reality that is both familiar and transfigured, where femininity and nature maintain profound and mysterious relationships.” —Nuit Blanche

[A] poetic, imaginative tale about the relationship between nature and industry.

” —Chatelaine

The lingering power of the story lies with the vivid imagery Wilhelmy conjures … Susan Ouriou’s translation is a marvel of precision and musicality.

” —Canadian Notes & Queries

White Resin is an enchanting, heartbreaking novel.

” —Miramichi Reader

White Resin restores a vision of the Canadian wilderness more in line with Indigenous ideas of a mutually dependent relationship between humanity and the natural environment. As a novel for our ecologically riven moment, it’s particularly powerful. As a lyrical, strange, occasionally mysterious story, it is unlike most anything else you’re likely to read in quite a while.

” —That Shakespearean Rag

PRAISE FOR AUDRÉE WILHELMY AND WHITE RESIN

“The lingering power of the story lies with the vivid imagery Wilhelmy conjures … Susan Ouriou’s translation is a marvel of precision and musicality.” — Canadian Notes & Queries

“[A] poetic, imaginative tale about the relationship between nature and industry.” — Chatelaine

“There is something about Audrée Wilhelmy I cannot find anywhere else. It’s in her style, of course. In her method, certainly. In her inventiveness, no doubt. But it goes beyond all that. With Wilhelmy, it lies in the pact she makes with the reader, as if the singularity of the universe she offers us does not come so much from literature, as from witchcraft. An ode to all-powerful freedom: of the body, of the land, of language, and of the feminine.” — Voir.ca

“Like the places she creates, Audrée Wilhelmy’s literary domain is vast and never ceases to dazzle.” — Lettres québécoises 

“By means of a demanding and chiseled prose, eminently poetic, rich in neologisms and in borrowings from native and northern European languages ​​(several can be found in a very convenient ‘Lexicon’), Wilhelmy draws us into a reality that is both familiar and transfigured, where femininity and nature maintain profound and mysterious relationships.” — Nuit Blanche


PRAISE FOR AUDRÉE WILHELMY AND THE BODY OF BEASTS

“A bold, tactile tale as vivid as cold sea water, The Body of the Beasts is an attentive study of desire, the senses, nature, and freedom, in which the lines between human and animal are blurred and those between good and bad are obliterated. Whether delving into the hushed violence permeating her characters’ lives or describing the exuberant, heartbreaking beauty of the wilderness, Wilhelmy’s powerful voice is soft but incisive, and Ouriou’s delicately crafted translation does her story every justice. This is a novel that conjures imaginary worlds but speaks to the most acute of realities.” — Catherine Leroux, Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated author of The Party Wall and Madame Victoria

“Audrée Wilhelmy built a literary universe unlike anything else that's been created in Quebec at the moment.” — Catherine Leroux, CBC Books

“A marvel … The style is magnificent, the characters unforgettable: Noé, Mie, and Osip are great literary creations. As with all this author’s books, the sensual is omnipresent, and sometimes troubling. The ending is overwhelming, and the chapter on the skinning of a whale is fantastic. Run to buy this book as soon as it arrives at the store!” — Michel Tremblay, winner of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award

The Body of the Beasts is a visceral story with wings: rhythmically beating, it both suffocates readers and prepares us to soar.” — World Literature Today

The Body of the Beasts is daring and darkly erotic, as emotionally and morally elusive as the characters who roam within it … Wilhelmy’s language is tight yet immersive; there is an underlying melancholy to it, like being alone in a forest with nothing but the sound of rustling leaves. It is rare and delightful to find a novel where language and character move so seamlessly together, hand in hand … A piece of this book will linger.” — Literary Review of Canada

“Sensual and strange.” — Booklist

“Uncanny and debaucherous.” — Foreword Reviews

“[Wilhelmy] is a meticulous recorder of the dramatic wilderness … Lovely writing.” — Kirkus Reviews

 “With a miniaturist’s touch, Audrée Wilhelmy creates a singular universe suffused with sap and silence, at once lush to the limit, smothering and amoral … A tour de force of audacity and sensuality achieved unhesitatingly in full-bodied writing that is precise and without misstep. A brilliant novel that explores from on high an aspect of the human condition too often eluded: our own bestiality.” — Le Devoir

“Masterful … Finding beauty in unexpected places, be they natural settings or seldom-explored corners of human behaviour, is something Wilhelmy does as well as any young writer in any language.” — Montreal Gazette


PRAISE FOR AUDRÉE WILHELMY AND LES SANGS

Finalist, Prix des lecteurs de l’Hebdo

Finalist, Prix Marie Claire du roman féminin

Finalist, Prix des libraires du Québec

Finalist, Prix France-Québec


PRAISE FOR AUDRÉE WILHELMY AND OSS

Finalist, Governor General’s Literary Award

Longlist, Prix des libraires du Québec