The second volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning novel cycle — acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction — reissued in a handsome A List edition.
Originally published in 2001, Thunder and Light is the second volume in Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning Soifs series, hailed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction. Powered by its characters’ gripping exploration of the world’s dark corners, the novel is a teeming microcosm in which boundaries collapse and the extremes and contradictions that animate our times are reconciled.
Blais locks us directly into the consciousness of her characters, many of whom we met in her previous novel, These Festive Nights, and many that she derives from actual news stories: Jessica, a seven-year-old attempting to beat the world record as the youngest pilot to cross the continent; Nathanaël, a teenager on death row for killing his favourite teacher; Our Lady of the Bags, a modern-day Joan of Arc who lives among Manhattan’s skyscrapers and follows the voices in her head; and Caroline and Jean-Mathieu, aging artists who are fighting to come together again. One character’s thoughts or actions have consequences for another 3,000 miles away who is a complete stranger to the first.
This is an intricate house of cards, delicately but expertly constructed, that shocks us in its perversity and familiarity, ultimately finding hope and redemption in the most human and basic forms of art.
The second volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning novel cycle — acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction — reissued in a handsome A List edition.
Originally published in 2001, Thunder and Light is the second volume in Marie-Claire Blais’s prize-winning Soifs series, hailed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction. Powered by its characters’ gripping exploration of the world’s dark corners, the novel is a teeming microcosm in which boundaries collapse and the extremes and contradictions that animate our times are reconciled.
Blais locks us directly into the consciousness of her characters, many of whom we met in her previous novel, These Festive Nights, and many that she derives from actual news stories: Jessica, a seven-year-old attempting to beat the world record as the youngest pilot to cross the continent; Nathanaël, a teenager on death row for killing his favourite teacher; Our Lady of the Bags, a modern-day Joan of Arc who lives among Manhattan’s skyscrapers and follows the voices in her head; and Caroline and Jean-Mathieu, aging artists who are fighting to come together again. One character’s thoughts or actions have consequences for another 3,000 miles away who is a complete stranger to the first.
This is an intricate house of cards, delicately but expertly constructed, that shocks us in its perversity and familiarity, ultimately finding hope and redemption in the most human and basic forms of art.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Aug 4, 2018 |
| Specifications | 216 pages | 5.5 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | marginalized stories; sexual oppression; stream of consciousness; reverie; challenging; magical; powerful; poetic prose; ten-novel cycle; Quebec literature; literature in translation; women writers; women's literature; works in translation; CanLit; IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for fiction; longlisted author; Quill & Quire; starred review; Virginia Woolf; Elmear McBride; |
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Supporting Resources
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS (1939-2001) was the internationally revered author of more than twenty-five books, many of which have been published around the world. In addition to the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, which she won four times, Blais was awarded the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Médicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowships. She divided her time between Key West, Florida, and Quebec. |
| Written By |
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MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS (1939-2001) was the internationally revered author of more than twenty-five books, many of which have been published around the world. In addition to the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, which she won four times, Blais was awarded the Gilles-Corbeil Prize, the Médicis Prize, the Molson Prize, and Guggenheim Fellowships. She divided her time between Key West, Florida, and Quebec. |
“Blais is a writer attuned — there should be a stronger word — to our times . . . Readers will be stunned and startled by Blais’ prose. Her characters, each an international mix of intellect, passion, and problems, are constructed with wisdom and compassion.” —Quill and Quire
“The inconsolable vision of the human condition expresses itself in powerful poetic prose, with a sort of multi-voice delirium that becomes an incantation, a prayer almost, and that attains hallucinatory dramatic density . . . We are with a writer at the far reaches of language, in the dazzling fracas of beauty.” —La Presse