Thunder and Light by Marie-Claire Blais

Thunder and Light by Marie-Claire Blais

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.

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 *

MARIE-CLAIRE BLAIS (1939-2021) 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 several Guggenheim Fellowships. Marie-Claire Blais divided her time between Florida and Quebec. Nigel Spencer is Marie-Claire Blais’ longtime translator and a three-time Governor General's Literary Award winner. He lives in Montreal, Quebec.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781487004255
ISBN 10	1487004257
Title	Thunder and Light
Author	Marie-Claire Blais
Series	List Ser
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	House of Anansi Press Ltd ,Canada
Year published	2019-09-19
Number of pages	216
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.