Synopses & Reviews
Fiction. Translated from the French by Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood. Carla Carlson is at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City trying to finish a novel. Nearby, a woman, preoccupied with grief and infatuated with her boss, catalogues antiquities at the Museum of Civilization. Every night, the two women meet at the hotel bar and talk--about childhood and parents and landscapes, about time and art, about Descartes and Francis Bacon and writing. From their talk emerges a lively and beguiling read about life and death and the vertigo of ruins. "A new work by Brossard is an event--YESTERDAY, AT THE HOTEL CLARENDON is not merely experimental. It's radical"--The Globe and Mail. Nicole Brossard has published more than thirty books over the last forty years. She has received two Governor General's Awards, the Athanase-David Prize and the W. O. Mitchell Prize. She lives in Montreal.
Synopsis
Carla Carlson is at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City trying to finish a novel. Nearby, a woman, preoccupied with sadness and infatuated with her boss, catalogues antiquities at the Museum of Civilization. Every night, the two women meet at the hotel bar and talk about childhood and parents and landscapes, about time and art, about Descartes and Francis Bacon and writing.
When Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon appeared in French (as Hier), the media called it the pinnacle of Brossards remarkable forty-year literary career. From its intersection of four women emerges a kind of art installation, a lively read in which life and death and the vertigo of ruins tangle themselves together to say something about history and desire and art.
About the Author
Montreal-born Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. Since then, she has published eight novels and many books of poetry. She is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry.