The Perfect Circle

by Pascale Quiviger, translated by Sheila Fischman

tagged: literary, contemporary women

Description

Marianne, a young Montrealer, has come to live in Tuscany to draw and write and examine her life. Here she meets Marco, a temptingly seductive man who still lives in his mother’s house in the village and who’s not prepared to commit himself to anything resembling a shared life. Though he breaks her heart, again and again, Marianne can only avoid him by returning to Canada.

This first novel by Pascale Quiviger is marked by its luminous language and its unstinting look at what makes Marianne, and Marco, and, indeed, an entire village and the world beyond it, tick.

About the Authors

Pascale Quiviger

Sheila Fischman

Born in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Sheila Fischman was raised in Ontario and is a graduate of the University of Toronto. She is a founding member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and has also been a columnist for the Globe and Mail and Montreal Gazette, a broadcaster with CBCRadio, and literary editor of the Montreal Star. She now devotes herself full time to literary translation, specializing in contemporary Québec fiction, and has translated more than 125 Québec novels by, among others, Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hébert, François Gravel, Marie-Claire Blais, and Roch Carrier. Sheila Fischman has received numerous honours, including the 1998 Governor General’s Award (for her translation of Michel Tremblay’s Bambi and Me for Talonbooks); she has been a finalist fourteen times for this award. She has received two Canada Council Translation Prizes and two Félix-Antoine Savard Awards from Columbia University. In 2000, she was invested into the Order of Canada and, in 2008, into the Ordre national du Québec, and, in 2008, she received the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize for her outstanding contributions to Canadian literature. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Ottawa and Waterloo. Fischman currently resides in Montréal.

Awards

Short-listed, Scotiabank Giller Prize

Editorial Reviews

“Quiviger’s prose flits across lofty queries and explores them with a lucid and gripping poetic style.”

— The Globe and Mail

“Quiviger’s prose will seduce the romantic with its many charms, while satisfying the realist with its challenging portrayal of a modern relationship that attempts to bridge two cultures, two languages, and two independent personalities.”

— Quill and Quire

“With The Perfect Circle, Quiviger gives us a wholly satisfying novel – one that stimulates the intellect while inflaming the senses.”

— Montreal Gazette

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