Abysses

by Mary Swan, Marie Frankland (Translator)

1918. La Première Guerre mondiale achève de déverser ses orages d'acier quand Esther et Ruth, des jumelles issues de la bonne société américaine, se portent volontaires pour servir comme cantinières sur le front de bataille français. Les deux jeunes femmes, liées corps et âme par leur gémellité, livrent un récit choral de leur expérience de la barbarie en plaçant peu à peu, avec l'aide de ceux qui les ont côtoyées, les morceaux d'une tragique mosaïque.
Se révéleront graduellement le mystère des ombres de leur passé, les raisons qui les ont poussées à s'engager à préserver l'humanité des êtres, jusqu'à la surprise du dénouement, tout de grâce silencieuse et d'éloquence contenue.
Les fragments qui composent Abysses disent l'absurdité de la tragédie guerrière et l'impossibilité pour les hommes de retenir les enseignements de l'Histoire. Court texte au style puissant et peu conventionnel, rare récit de guerre envisagé d'un point de vue féminin, Abysses est une oeuvre majeure.

119 pages, Paperback

First published October 20, 2014

About the author

Mary Swan is a Canadian novelist and short story writer. She is also a trained librarian with a keen eye for history. Her novel The Boys in the Trees, a shortlisted nominee for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize, was inspired by a newspaper clipping concerning a death within a family.

Swan was the winner of the 2001 O. Henry Award for short fiction for her short story "The Deep", which was published in The Malahat Review. That story later became the title story of her debut short story collection The Deep and Other Stories in 2002.

A graduate of York University and the University of Guelph, she currently resides in Guelph, Ontario with her family.

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful, haunting novella of two Canadian twin sisters who go to serve at a camp in war-torn France during the last months of WWI. A moving story of the sisters and those around them that ends the only way a tale like this can end.

[Rick · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Deep is an excellent novella that left an impression on me. It is a story of twin sisters from Canada who travel to Europe as volunteers to help out refugees and soldiers in WWI. The book offers valuable insights regarding the impact of the war on individuals and how they responded to it. The author, Mary Swan, used some interesting techniques; the book is like a series of vignettes told from multiple perspectives. At first I didn't like the technique, but gradually came to embrace it and the story. The story also explores the connection between twins. I found the book to be almost haunting as I thought about it after finishing it. Mary Swan won the O. Henry short story award for this book and rightly so.

[Véronique]

Bof.