Back Roads

by Andrée A. Michaud, J. C. Sutcliffe (Translator)

Overview

In Scotiabank Giller Prize–longlisted author Andrée A. Michaud’s genre-defying, ethereal mystery, a writer encounters her double and must grapple with an undetermined crime — and her own identity.

In the dubious sanctuary of a wintry forest, a writer encounters a woman who she suspects may be her double. So begins a journey of inquiry in which nothing, not even the author’s own identity, is certain. Who is Heather Thorne? Is she a stranger dangerously out of place in the woods, the victim of an accident or of a crime? Who is the author? Is her own name not in fact Heather Thorne?

Brimming with the snowy menace and mystery of the boreal woods, where nothing is ever entirely known, the celebrated and prize-winning Quebec noir novelist Andrée A. Michaud once again defies categorization in an ethereal story that is also a meditation on the very process of literary creation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487005801
Publisher:	Arachnide Editions
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

ANDRÉE A. MICHAUD is one of the most beloved and celebrated writers in the French language. She is, among numerous accolades, a two-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and has won the Arthur Ellis Award for Excellence in Canadian Crime Writing, the Prix Ringuet, and France’s Prix SNCF du Polar. Her novel Boundary was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and has been published in seven territories, and the English translation of Back Roads was a finalist for Governor General’s Literary Award. She was born in Saint-Sébastien-de-Frontenac and continues to live in the province of Quebec.

J. C. SUTCLIFFE is a translator, writer, and editor. Her translation of Back Roads by Andrée A. Michaud was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her other translations include Mama’s Boy and Mama’s Boy Behind Bars by David Goudreault, Document 1 by François Blais, and Worst Case, We Get Married by Sophie Bienvenu. She has written for the Globe and Mail, the Times Literary Supplement, and the National Post, among others. She lives in Peterborough, Ontario.

Read an Excerpt

I must be called Heather. She must be called Heather. I’ve been repeating these sentences over and over for months without managing to figure out what they mean. Little by little, they’ve lost their clarity and become an obsession.

I must be called Heather. She must be called Heather.

Fall was nearly over when these few words showed up and imposed themselves on me like an injunction, like some kind of obligation I’d be skeptical about if I were able to think more calmly. I was walking on the gravel road I’d known since childhood, keeping an eye out for furtive movements in the undergrowth, a rustling of leaves or a cracking of branches that would indicate the presence of an animal other than myself in the shifting shadows. With all my senses alert, I was imagining a novel in which I would convey the mysterious power of this undergrowth when suddenly I stopped right in the middle of the road, dumbstruck, murmuring, “I must be called Heather, she must be called Heather.”

For a few moments, I was nothing more than these two interchangeable sentences, I must be called Heather, she must be called Heather, as if some truth buried under the weight of years had resurfaced in the sweet October wind. And then I felt something bubbling up in me, the sort of relief that follows a long period of waiting, and I was finally able to relax. I had just sketched out the beginning of the novel I’d been seeking in the undergrowth.

I don’t know how long I stood there, but the sun was setting when the noise of a car coming over the hill behind me forced me to step back toward the ditch, where soggy leaves lined the thin trail of a stream that widened out a little further on.

The car slowed down when it reached me, the woman driving it probably curious as to why I wasn’t moving and suspecting some problem, a situation demanding that she stop and help me there and then, by the rapidly darkening forest. When our eyes met, I tried to convey the smile I felt blooming in me, as a feeling of peace filled me at last. But my smile quickly vanished when I realized the eyes looking back at me were my own.

Stunned by the resemblance, I retreated another step and raised my arms, as if to touch the face I was backing away from — the face of the woman scrutinizing me with widened eyes that were blue, just like mine — wanting to feel its features the way blind people do. And then, seeing her panic-stricken expression — the clichéd image that sprang to mind was of a doe being chased by a pack of wolves — I lowered my arms and signalled to her to carry on, that everything was fine. When her car disappeared around the bend, I went down to the stream, my quaking legs crumpling to the earth, to try to see my reflection in it. Kneeling down at the edge of the water, the trickle of which was too thin to reflect anything more than my fear, I dipped into the surface of the water with my fingertips and murmured a name, Heather, because I had understood, when our incredulous eyes recognized each other, that the woman in the car was called Heather, that she had to be called Heather, and that henceforth our fates would be inextricably linked.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

PRAISE FOR ANDRÉE A. MICHAUD

“[Andrée A. Michaud] deserves to be better known as one of the best writers in North America.”— World Literature Today

“For over thirty years, Michaud has built a legion of readers enthralled by her singular brand of lit-myst hybrid fiction.” — National Post

“[Andrée A. Michaud’s] writing is lyrical and layered.” — Kirkus Reviews

PRAISE FOR ANDRÉE A. MICHAUD AND BOUNDARY

Longlist, Scotiabank Giller Prize

“One of 2017’s finest reads yet . . . there’s no simplicity in the questions of existence at hand, but in Michaud’s Boundary, readers will find freedom: a skilled, award-winning author stretching folklore without leaping from truth and within crafting a true thriller, lyrical and satisfying, taut and beautifully told.” — National Post

“The book features two murders and a pair of sleuth figures (hence the Arthur Ellis), but it often seems less a whodunit and more a literary meditation on the impact of the killings on the small community, Boundary, where they took place (hence, the GG Award).” — Toronto Star

“While it has an element of the whodunit, this lushly written, award-winning francophone novel is literary crime-writing in which the texture of period and place takes priority.” — Sunday Times

“The style is dense, lyrical, sometimes hallucinatory, often beautiful . . . It is a difficult book to put down, but less because we are anxious for a plot resolution than because we are held in a sort of spell woven out of a particular historical moment and a timeless tension between a state of innocence and its inevitable loss.” — Reviewing the Evidence

“Speaks to a confluence of borders — geographical, cultural, and temporal — and replicates and blurs them to great effect . . . Beautifully written and compelling, this book will prompt important conversations, as will Michaud’s adept handling of cultural difference, which is well represented even in translation.” — Canadian Literature

“A dense and beautiful novel about the human condition . . . While most crime novels put the murder center stage, this one instead uses the crime to deeply examine the complexity of what it means to be alive . . . Spellbinding.” — Kirkus Reviews, STARRED REVIEW

“Atmospheric and haunting, this novel about the lingering effects of violence is impossible to turn away from.” — Foreword Reviews

“The literary thriller exists. Andrée A. Michaud is the proof.” — La Presse

“The writing is impassioned, inspired. The pace is breathless, yet punctuated by scenes of everyday family life.” — Le Devoir

“Brilliantly innovative in narrative and thrillingly readable, Boundary is a splendid novel that makes high literature out of crime and suspense. I am an instant and ardent fan of Andrée A. Michaud.” — Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain