Bøger af Marie-Claire Blais

— Mit Smukke Bæst, ser du det nu, din mor har aldrig elsket dig. Er du ked af det? Sover du?Det smukke bæst er et ondt eventyr om en forsømt pige, hendes guddommeligt smukke, men enfoldige bror og deres selvoptagede mor. Med sin udpenslede vold og ødipale mareridtsstemning var romanen, skrevet af den dengang kun 20-årige Marie-Claire Blais, et særsyn i 50'ernes Canada. Den vakte enorm forargelse, men betragtes i dag som et uomgængeligt hovedværk i det 20. århundredes canadiske litteratur. Marie-Claire Blais hører til samme generation af canadiske forfattere som Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale), der om sit rystende møde med romanen sagde:"Bogen gjorde mig meget utilpas, af andre end blot de åbenlyse grunde: volden, mordene, antydningerne af incest og skriftens hallucinatoriske intensitet var sjældne i datidens canadiske litteratur, men endnu mere skræmmende var tanken om, at denne utroligt velskrevne, bloddryppende fantasi var skrevet af en kun 19-årig pige."

"Renâe suddenly feels like an old man. In his 90s, recovering at home after an illness, his mind will not leave the past. He is both comforted and annoyed by the officious care provided byhis Russian nurse, who keeps referring to him as a woman. It is a lifetime struggle. Right ow, Renâe just wants to get out of his pajamas and dress elegantly, as in the old days of playing piano in cabarets.A friend--or lover--will surely visit? And they do. Renâe is soon surrounded. By the writer Johnie, the musician Doudouline, the theologian Polydor, thepainter l'Abeille, and Gâerard, a lover of forbidden pleasures.They support each other, offering shelter from the cold, snowy world outside. They reminisce about past loves, tragedies, fights. The Stonewall riots. The AIDS pandemic where they lost so much. The Women's March on Washington. They steel themselves to take on the monster of bigotry and intolerance whenever it rears its ugly head, as it always does, again and again.Most of all, they find comfort and hope in each other's presence, and in the fight that so manyare continuing: to assert our own identities, to love how we wish, and not be defined by what society expects."--

Its the spring of 1963. The young Quebec author Marie-Claire Blais, bursting with energy and talent, has just won a coveted Guggenheim fellowship. She chooses Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the place where she will begin her writers apprenticeship with her mentor, Edmund Wilson. American Notebooks is much more than a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer.

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award: Translation. Shortlisted for the Cole Foundation Prize for Translation.Literary legend and four-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award Marie-Claire Blais delivers the latest installment in her ongoing portrait of life in contemporary North America.In this swirling fresco, we meet unforgettable characters, some familiar from previous works, some new. This time, Blais lets us into the consciousness of fifteen-year-old Mai, an unusually perceptive young woman whose uncensored observations on femininity and youth, freedom and constraint belie her age. And, in the Porte du Baiser Saloon, we meet a group of boys who adorn themselves in colourful dresses and wigs before they take to the stage to sing and dance every evening after darkness falls. They open their arms to those who are excluded -- both men and women, triumphant and threatened, both free and bound.With this astonishing new novel, Blais gives us a remarkable chronicle of our modern age teeming with characters who seem to represent the whole of humanity. She invites us to share the drama of perfect joy, the tragedy of happiness, and she gives us her best work yet.

What anxiety grips Petites Cendres as he runs towards the sea in the sunshine on a warm tropical morning? Shouldn’t he be reassured by the thought that he now lives at the Acacia Gardens, a comfortable home where all find care, understanding, and healing? How can Fleur, the young musical prodigy, listen to the diabolical confessions of Wrath, the fugitive priest, without shuddering? And, can Daniel the writer finish his novel, the one he has been working on for twenty years, despite his sensitivity and empathy for all creatures, even if they are the most humble, like the lizard he inadvertently crushed under his sandal?With this latest novel, Marie-Claire Blais once again gives us a vibrant portrait that embraces the span of life — from birth to death and beyond. Her characters question their purpose and what will come after, as they are confronted by evil that lives and that has taken root.

In the latest installment in her award-winning series, Marie-Claire Blais reintroduces us to Petites Cendres, familiar from other books in the cycle, and lets us into the lives of two other unforgettable characters. She shows us, once again, how creativity and hope and suffering and exclusion intersect.There is the writer who is stranded in an airport of the South Island, he is held captive because of a delayed flight. And a teenage musician, a former child prodigy living on the streets with his dog, wonders where he will get his next meal. Then there is Petites Cendres, who no longer dances or sings and refuses to get out of bed to attend the coronation of the new Queen of Night.By superimposing these three worlds, Blais continues her ambitious, compelling exploration of life in contemporary North America

The first volume in the beloved novelist Marie-Claire Blais¿ prize-winning novel cycle ¿ acclaimed as one of the greatest undertakings in modern Quebec fiction ¿ reissued in a handsome A List edition, featuring an introduction by Lisa Moore.Originally published in 1995 under the title Soifs, the first novel in Marie-Claire Blais¿ masterful series won the Governor General¿s Award for French Fiction and was hailed by critics around the world as a tour de force, comparing Blais to such literary greats as Virginia Woolf, Dante, Sophocles, and Shakespeare. In this dazzling rendering, These Festive Nights, celebrated translator Sheila Fischman brings Blais¿ novel to life for English-speaking readers.A sun-drenched paradise in the Gulf of Mexico surrounded by the glimmering blue sea; Renata is convalescing on this island poised between two worlds: between great wealth and extreme poverty, between the past and an uncertain future, between the beauty of the world and the horrors of history.During her time here, Renata becomes tormented by thirst ¿ for justice, for pleasure, for intoxication ¿ while all around her, festivities are going on in joint celebration of the birth of baby Vincent and the end of the twentieth century. Over the course of three days and three nights a flock of characters assembles ¿ an entire spectrum of humanity is depicted in the grip of doubt and suffering. In this swirling, baroque fresco, Marie-Claire Blais captures the essence of our apocalyptic age, rendering it in powerfully evocative prose.

Originally published in 2001, the second volume in Blais' prize-winning Soifs series has been 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.

The latest work in internationally acclaimed author Marie-Claire Blais's masterful novel cycle, A Twilight Celebration examines the prophetic side of the writer and the burden that falls to him in a world whose fate is yet to be determined.

Through Genevieve--a woman struggling with an idealistic vision of love--a door is opened into the lives of the characters through which Marie-Claire Blais came to the forefront of feminism in Canada. Night after night in a club called The Underground, Genevieve and her friends live out their loves and their tragedies apart from the day-to-day life of the city. Each glance, each embrace, and each ensuing encounter weaves a profound matrix of human isolation, with transcendence found in the healing power of love.

The Angel of Solitude presides over the lives of eight young lesbian women who strive to achieve an all-female utopia within which homophobia, their pasts and their differences are abolished. As the narrative unfolds, we realize that none of the women are present directly - they come into being, and live their lives, only in and through the memories, observations and imaginations of each of the others. Thus, their mission to establish a fortress for themselves remains inconclusive; they have too much to overcome, both within themselves and in the world at large, to abandon their individual struggles for the sake of the group.

A novel of Pauline Archange's desire to translate the events of her life into words.

Two school boys plot and enact the murder of a classmate. Cast of 3 women and 17 men.

In her third and most powerful novel, Marie-Claire Blais explores, with sober compassion and realistic detail, a season in the life of Emmanuel, the sixteenth child of a poverty-stricken farmer's family in rural Quebec. First published in 1965, "A Season in the Life of Emmanuel established Blais's international reputation when it won the Prix France-Quebec and the Prix Medicis of France. The novel has been translated into 13 languages.