Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
FANNY BRITT is a playwright, novelist and translator. She collaborated with Isabelle Arsenault on two previous graphic novels: Jane, the Fox and Me, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Illustration (French) and the Joe Shuster Award for Best Writer and for Best Artist, and Louis Undercover. Her other award-winning works include the play Bienvaillance and her first novel, Les maisons (published in English as Hunting Houses). Fanny lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her husband and two sons. SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. Jane, the Fox and Me, co-translated with Christelle Morelli, was named to IBBY’s Honour List. She has also published Nathan, a novel for young readers. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta. CHRISTELLE MORELLI is a literary translator and French immersion teacher. She has translated several works of fiction for publication, including Jane, the Fox and Me and Stolen Sisters. Having lived in Quebec and France, she now makes her home with her family in Western Canada.Britt’s novel is an unflinching reminder that heartbreak doesn’t discriminate… . Britt reveals, moment by moment, the lifetime of a woman caught between the expectations of motherhood and personal fulfillment.
Metro
Britt is especially strong at capturing the hyper-vulnerability a mother can feel on behalf of her children . . . In capturing and sustaining that intense emotional pitch, the novel is spiritual kin to Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Adult Onset and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin . . . Translators Susan Ouriou and Christelle Morelli do an exemplary job of rendering Britt’s prose crisply and idiomatically.
Montreal Gazette
Lauren Groff’s Fates and Furies meets Rachel Cusk’s The Lucky Ones in this astounding debut novel about a woman on the verge of infidelity.
Tessa is a thirty-seven-year-old real estate agent living in Montreal. She adores her husband and three young sons, but she’s deeply unhappy and questioning the set of choices that have led to her present life.
After a surprising run-in with Francis, her ex-boyfriend and first love, Tessa arranges to see him. During the three days before their meeting, she goes about her daily life — there’s swimming lessons, science projects, and dirty dishes. As the day of her meeting with Francis draws closer she has to decide if she is willing to disrupt her stable, loving family life for an uncertain future with him.
With startling clarity and emotional force, Fanny Britt gives us a complex portrait of a woman and a marriage from the inside out.
DEBUT NOVEL FROM AWARD-WINNING CHILDREN’S BOOK AUTHOR:
- Fanny Britt is the author of the best-selling, critically acclaimed graphic novels Jane, the Fox and Me (2013) and Louis Undercover (2017). Jane, the Fox and Me received three starred reviews, was selected for the New York Times Best Illustrated Books list, and won a Governor General’s Literary Award, among others. Upon writing, Louis Undercover has received four starred reviews.
THE COMPLEXITIES OF MARRIAGE:
- This title fits in perfectly with an increasingly popular genre: books that take a look at the complexities of a marriage from the inside, including such titles as Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff and The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk. This debut novel from Fanny Britt takes an honest look at a woman thinking of leaving her husband and throwing away her idyllic suburban life for a chance to start over again with her first love.
U.S. OUTREACH:
- Hunting Houses will be available on Edelweiss and NetGalley and galleys will be given away at Winter Institute 2018 and ALA Annual. We will also be doing a targeted IndieNext campaign for Hunting Houses.
Évelyne is crying in earnest now. I take her hand. I say yes, her house is fabulous. I myself would buy it if I could. It will make some family very happy just as hers was for several years.
My client nods, I know she finds the idea comforting — all my clients do. There must be some solace in thinking your house will go on living apart from you, like an extension, a promise renewed no matter the hardships or failures, bestowing sudden meaning on sorrow. Personally, it's all a mystery to me since I have no desire to see others blossom where I once withered away — but then I'm not a very nice person.
Évelyne shows me the rest of her house: two children's bedrooms. In the first room, a cream-coloured quilt in a delicate pattern of pink and pale-green buttercups and peonies. A number of lively drawings on the walls, all signed SOLENE. In the second bedroom, blue and green stripes, dinosaur figurines, wood letters painted red hanging on the door: MATTEO. Évelyne was astute enough to keep the walls white. It won't be as difficult for potential buyers to project their own lives onto them — nothing is less helpful than a pink bedroom covered in princess decals for the morale of a mother with two sons who longs for the daughter she never had and hopes to find in her new abode the secret formula that will at last guarantee her the perfect family she's dreamt of since childhood. I respond to the client with all the solicitude I can muster, Who knows, this house could be a lucky charm, but when, guilt-ridden at having downplayed the worth of the children she does have, she grabs hold of my arm, My boys are wonderful, I love them so much, after all, what counts is that they're healthy, no? Do you have children? and I answer, Yes, three boys, for the space of a second, she's caught between wanting to be me and relief that she isn't. Her coral lips give the faintest, saddest smile ever smiled and she murmurs: Three boys. That's quite something, isn't it.