The River of Dead Trees

by Andrée A. Michaud, Nathalie Stephens (Translation)

Middle-aged and short on prospects, Charles Wilson returns to Trempes, the village of his childhood, and discovers the body of his childhood friend, Paul Faber, hanging from a tree in the clearing where they played as boys. Thus begins Wilson’s obsessive quest to exhume the secrets of his past and to understand the reasons for his friend’s death. But memories shift, people change and things are never as they seem. Soon Wilson finds himself caught up in a delusory spiral that threatens his very existence.

This is at once a neo-Gothic metaphysical thriller and a meticulous meditation on the unapologetic betrayal of memory and imagination. Wilson’s story bubbles up from the faults between mystery and fairy tale, brimming with characters haunted and tortured by the past, where truth and deception are wound up in time like the gnarled branches of old, grizzled trees.

189 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Deux fois lauréate du Prix littéraire du Gouverneur général (Le Ravissement, 2001, et Bondrée, 2014), récipiendaire du prix Arthur Ellis et du prix Saint-Pacôme du roman policier pour Bondrée, ainsi que du prix Ringuet en 2006 pour Mirror Lake (adapté au cinéma en 2013), Andrée A. Michaud construit une œuvre éminemment personnelle qui ne cesse, depuis son premier roman, de susciter les éloges de la critique et des lecteurs avides de mystère. Son polar Lazy Bird, porté par des airs de jazz, est paru en 2010 au Seuil, en France, dans la collection Point noir.

Reviews

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

un livre qui montre la folie à l'état pur! difficile à lire par bout, mais j'ai quand même apprecié le thème du roman! Parfois, l'écriture est 《 complexe》 à lire, un peu lourd par boutte! un roman ok!

[J. Moufawad-Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that I started and restarted multiple times because its style and composition required a certain level of energy and dedication that I lacked at the time. The experimental-impressionistic prose style means that, from the get-go, it is a book that requires a certain level of energy to complete, but ultimately it's worthwhile. Since I read the English translation, and was impressed by the beauty of the prose, I cannot comment on the original (though I suspect the translation was as faithful as possible to the source material), but I was still staggered by the style and the way this style encouraged the story to unfold in an evocative, phenomenological manner.

Interestingly enough, I finally completed it while reading Brian Evenson's *Last Days*. Although the formal conventions of Michaud and Evenson can be said to exist on opposite ends of the literary spectrum (with the former in favour of a more literarily ornate style, and the latter in favour of a stripped down economy of words), I found some weird solidarity in the subject material. Or maybe that's just me.

Can we get some more Michaud translated into English?

[⚡ mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

"the fact is that I don't know what madness is. I have often spoke of it as an obvious fact, in those moments when I leaned against the reference points of others and when I tried to forget that the world and I are not on the same side of the abyss."