With one side in Mile End and the other in Outremont, Hutchison Street is inhabited by characters from many different backgrounds, including a community of Hasidim and a writer whose newest project is a novel about the people she has lived among for thirty-nine years. She traces the life stories of an aging singer, a bag-lady who feeds birds in a back alley, an Italian widow who grows tomatoes in her front yard, a Jamaican woman who longs to dance the night away, and a young Hasidic girl who keeps a diary. A moving account of isolated individuals attempting to reach out to one another in one of Montreal's most diverse neighbourhoods.

Abla Farhoud is a Montreal writer of Lebanese descent. She was an actress before becoming a playwright, and completed a master's in theatre arts from the University of Quebec in Montreal. In addition to several plays, she has published five novels and has achieved considerable acclaim in French. Hutchison Street is the first of her novels to appear in English. She lives in Montreal.

Abla Farhoud's profile page

"A lesson in tolerance, this novel is also a tribute to books — all books: crime fiction, the Torah, the Bible, the private journal, the cookbook. To the books that bind us together." — Christian Desmeules