The Milky Way
by Louise Dupré
translated by Liedewy Hawke
- Short-listed, The Governor General's Award for Translation (French to English)
Confident, hardworking, and practical, architect Anne Martin is living the good life in Montreal. Yet one day, high up in her apartment overlooking the city and the river, at the heart of her perfectly controlled universe, Anne witnesses a scene that causes a crack to appear in her life, a crack that slowly widens and eventually threatens her very existence.
At this time of lost certainty, Anne's work takes her to Tunis. Here, among the ruins of Carthage, she meets Alessandro Moretti, an Italian archaeologist who is her senior by nearly twenty years and affects her as no one ever has. A struggle ensues, between love and jealousy, love and the fear of abandonment, love and other, even deeper fears. Anne gradually faces her demons the buried sorrow of a child of a broken family, the bewilderment caused by a mysterious family tragedy.
close this panelLouise Dupre is the author of numerous books and was twice nominated for the Governor General's Award for Poetry. Her novel La memoria (1996) won two major literary prizes. La Voie lactee (The Milky Way), her most recent book, was nominated for the 2001 Prix France-Quebec. Louise Dupre teaches literature and creative writing at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal.
Liedewy Hawke's translation Hopes and Dreams: The Diary of Henriette Dessaulles, 1874-1881 won the 1986 Canada Council Prize for Translation (now the Governor General's Award for Translation). Her other translations include Memoria (Louise Dupre's La memoria), published by Simon & Pierre in 1999, and House of Sighs, a translation of Jocelyne Saucier's La vie comme une image, published by Mercury Press in 2001.
close this panel"Louise Dupre has crafted a sweet and inspired love story set against the background of troubled family relations. It is novel of redemption, revealing that a quieted heart can permit past steps to be retraced, past wrongs forgiven and old ghosts banished. This slight but deftly written book shows a writer whose nerve endings lie near the surface, and whose perceptions of human conflict, loss and reconciliation are keen and keenly conveyed."
"AS with Dupre's last novel, Memoria, The Milky Way was translated by Liedwy Hawke, the Governor General's award winner who once again has done a wonderful job of rendering the original French into sensitive, sensual English, striking no wrong notes. This is a beautiful book about coming-of-age in middle age."
