Exploring contemporary life and the penetrating energy of youth, this novel follows Anna, an introspective, alienated teenager without hope. Anna and her friend Michelle have experienced what life today has to offer?they have experimented with drugs and sex and have taken dance and music lessons in an attempt to find some meaning in their existence?and yet they have rejected its premise and instead remain alone and empty. Chilling and often terrifying, this chronicle portrays two young women who are not bored but are instead without hope of finding peace or even living long enough to begin the search.

Born in 1939 in Québec, Marie-Claire Blais continues to dominate the literary landscape. Having published her first novel at the age of twenty, she has gone on to publish twenty novels to date in France and Quebec—all of which have been translated into English—as well as five plays and several collections of poetry. All of her writings have met with international acclaim.Talon has published her American Notebooks, a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer.Winner of the Prix Médicis, the Prix Belgo-Canadien, the Prix France-Québec, and many others, Blais continues to devote herself to work that is proud and exacting. Most recently, she has been invited, as one of the very few foreigners allowed, to join Belgium’s Academy of French Language and Literature.

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?Lightning on the literary landscape.”  ?Saturday Night

?Unbelievably brilliant.”  “Times Literary Supplement