In The Heart Is What Dies Last, Robert Lalonde paints a moving portrait of the woman who was his mother, a woman trapped by fate and who, from beyond the grave, nurtures a relationship of tenderness and conflict with her son. Shuffling through snippets of memories, like flipping through a photo album, the story takes us on a journey to a time long past, revealing a disorderly rapport between mother and son. An ode to the author’s departed mother, the book presents her every facet: at times as a young woman with a movie-star smile; at times as an anxious and stormy mother; at times as an old lady with an unfailing memory. But at every stage of her life, she remains authentic, strong and unpredictable. With nostalgia “for an old happiness in black and white,” with neither varnish nor ornament, the author depicts his mother as woman who never really left him. “I was right to love you, then right to hate you and run away, right to make a life for myself far from you, and finally right to come back home, even if it’s getting late.” A strikingly realistic and sensitive portrait, The Heart Is What Dies Last reveals the evanescence of time and the power of memory.

An actor, playwright and translator, Robert Lalonde is one of Quebec’s leading novelists. Seven Lakes Further North was a finalist for the 1993 Governor General’s Award for French fiction. His previous novels published in translation by Ekstasis Editions include The Ogre of Grand Remous, The Devil Incarnate, One Beautiful Day To Come and The Whole Wide World.

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A writer, translator, researcher and communications specialist, Jean-Paul Murray has translated ten books, including Betsi Larousse and Cowboy, novels by Governor General’s Award winner Louis Hamelin, The Biker Who Shot Me, by Michel Auger, and I Was a Killer for the Hells Angels, by Pierre Martineau. From 1995 to 1998, Mr. Murray was managing editor of Cité libre, a magazine founded by Pierre Trudeau, and was the magazine’s English translating coordinator from 1998 to 2000. Among his Cité libre translations are works authored by Allan Cairns, Jacques Hébert, Mordecai Richler, F. R. Scott, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

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