This history of oppression and its effects, at the heart of a French-Canadian family in the 1950s and 1960s, depicts a combination of prohibitions and censures. While the father demands the children's slavish obedience and labour, the mother promises some protection from his tyranny--until the family settles into a flea pit hotel at the cross-roads of a practically deserted village. Surrounded by an impenetrable forest, the hotel hosts regulars that resemble characters from Hugo and Gorki, and family life declines. In hopes of escape, the younger daughter marries while the elder, against her parents' wishes, immerses herself in studies and asks questions whose answers are disturbing.

France Théoret holds a doctorate in French Studies from the University of Sherbrooke. After nineteen years of teaching, she quit to devote herself full-time to writing. Laurence, translated for The Mercury Press by Gail Scott, is Théoret’s eleventh book; previous titles include The Man Who Painted Stalin, Nous parlerons comme on écrit, Nécessairement putain, and Entre raison et déraison.

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LUISE VON FLOTOW is a translator of French and German literature. Her novel translations include La femme du stalinien, Une belle éducation,and L’hôtel aux quatre chemins by France Théoret, and she also edited the essay collection Translating Women: Different Voices and New Horizons. She is a professor at the School of Translation and Interpretation at the University of Ottawa.

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For 30 years, France Théoret’s writing has tried to piece together the fragments of a shattered mirror depicting the self … [This] is a moving and overwhelming book, written with sobriety and subtlety.

Suzanne Giguère, Le Devoir