Praise for Madame Victoria
“An unnerving series of portraits . . . both intimately personal and bound to universal elements of mortality, physicality, and femaleness . . . [Leroux] expertly probes fallible, achingly human characters to form a portrait of a lost woman and examine the fragile forces that underlie a life. Gorgeously written, unsettling, and well worth the read.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Leroux is a fearless writer who invokes fable with sure-footed confidence ... The end result is a novel that packs a star’s density of rage and love into its pages, a delicate and unflinching look at the impossibilities of womanhood that is nothing short of incandescent. A testament to the power of fable and myth, Madame Victoria is a triumphant feat of storytelling.” —Quill & Quire (starred review)
“Fun is a word that comes up often when Leroux is talking about her work and its process, but there’s nothing frivolous implied . . . It’s the kind of fun that comes with full creative engagement, with choosing seldom-trod paths and arriving in places you might not have thought you’d reach . . . [Madame Victoria] confirms the 39-year-old Montrealer as one of Canada’s best and most adventurous writers.” —Montreal Gazette
“[K]aleidoscopic, expansive fiction about connections and possibilities.” —Globe & Mail
“Equal parts compelling and unsettling . . . Even as Leroux’s descriptions depart from our expectations and reaches for the strange or the surreal or for the unfamiliar emotional landscape, the Victorias’ stories are resonant and disorienting.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“As a follow-up to her Giller Prize-nominated novel The Party Wall, [Madame Victoria] reinforces Leroux’s unique ability to bring unsettling moments to life, bending our sense of reality to accommodate all manner of strange possibility. In yet another masterful translation by Lazer Lederhendler, the reader is both swept away by the beauty of the writing, and captivated by the repeated unravelling of Victoria.” —Montreal Review of Books
“Lazer Lederhendler’s English translation . . . sparks and simmers with numinous prose, allowing Victoria to emerge as a guiding star, the one constant in a shimmering landscape . . . Madame Victoria honors all women on the margins, all women dismissed by society. It tempts us to reconsider the ways in which we think of victims, showing us that if we listened, there is much they could teach us about ourselves.” —Arkansas International
“An imaginative, haunting, and insightful examination of the lives of women...absorbing and often poignant, Madame Victoria is an achievement, both as a mystery about the missing identity of one woman and in its portrayal of women’s lives more broadly.” —Foreword Reviews
“A unique and inherently fascinating approach to narrative storytelling, and ably translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler . . . unreservedly recommended.” —Midwest Book Review
Praise for Catherine Leroux
“…superbly crafted…Leroux skillfully reveals the inner worlds of her achingly human characters and the intricate bonds that connect them to each other. Images from this beautiful and moving book will haunt readers.” —Publishers Weekly
“…full of insightful passages, dynamic characters and surprising situations. The Party Wall is a searching investigation of familial ties of biology and biography and the complex ways in which self-discovery affects our relationships.” —The Winnipeg Review
“Initially, The Party Wall reads like a collection of linked stories; past the halfway mark, however, it reveals itself as something more intricate and cumulative… A surprising, carefully structured novel that for English readers will bring to mind David Mitchell, this feels much more expansive than its page count.” —The Globe and Mail
“A revelation… an emotionally affecting, intellectually stimulating examination of separation and connection.”—Ian McGillis, Montreal Gazette
★ 2018-09-18
An unnerving series of portraits capturing the possible lives of a woman whose remains were discovered near a Montreal hospital in 2001.
When a skeleton was found in the woods surrounding the crumbling, old-fashioned Royal Victoria Hospital, it sparked a national fascination with its identity. Yet despite scientific tests that revealed surprisingly personal characteristics (they describe a middle-aged Caucasian woman with osteoporosis and "high cheekbones, faded features") and a missing person hotline inundated with leads, "Victoria's" identity remains unknown. Leroux constructs 12 starkly different possible lives for Victoria, fashioning portraits that are both intimately personal and bound to universal elements of mortality, physicality, and femaleness. In "Victoria Outside," a 16-year-old mother embarks on a haunting journey through Quebec City's dark alleys and beyond after tragedy strikes. More closely tied to reality yet deeply nuanced, "Victoria Drinks" finds an ambitious woman rising ruthlessly through the ranks of a male-dominated newspaper company, fortified by Scotch, till her aging body rebels—spurring a dizzying meditation on the fragility of human ambition. Other stories evoke more abstract settings. A woman who's outlasted the decimation of her tribe contemplates the brutal realities of survival in "Victoria Down." A shifting, volatile natural environment—melting ice caps, constantly migrating populations—takes center stage in "Victoria on the Horizon," as a woman struggles to exist in a world that appears to directly attack her body with acute, grotesque physical ailments. Though at first the accounts seem disconnected, the book picks up steam and builds to a complex and thought-provoking conclusion. Expansive and cleareyed, Leroux's (The Party Wall, 2016) novel expertly probes fallible, achingly human characters to form a portrait of a lost woman and examine the fragile forces that underlie a life.
Gorgeously written, unsettling, and well worth the read.
