Baroque d'aube

by Nicole Brossard

Deux femmes. Une chambre. Hôtel Rafale. Une ville armée jusqu'aux dents. Plus tard, Rimouski, le fleuve tranquille, la naissance d'un projet entre une femme de lettres, une photographe et l'océanographe Occident DesRives. La mer. Ivresse du récit. Puis, la réalité vaille, les questions se multiplient, secouent les certitudes. Un temps double s'installe, couple mystérieux du réel et du virtuel. Qui de l'image ou des mots nous initiera désormais à la vérité des lieux, à la passion forte du futur?

Roman de vertige et d'exubérance, Baroque d'aube rappelle sur écran de ville et de nuit que, là où les visages de la fiction et les pensées se rencontrent, le monde fertile du désir recommence en nous comme une intuition.

Genres: Fiction

260 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Born in Montreal (Quebec), poet, novelist and essayist Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

It takes a brave author to set her characters out to sea on a boat that's called the Symbol. It's a bit all over the place but I didn't mind so much. If you liked Renata Adler's Speedboat, etc.

The nice people at Mes Pants de Queer recommended this to me when I moved to Montreal and wanted to read Quebec lit in English. I started it and stopped at least twice (I've been back in the US for a year and a half already) but I'm glad I finally sat down to enjoy this one.

[laurie m. (leaumimi) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quel plaisir j’ai eu à lire ce roman 💙 C’est une découverte de Nicole Brossard pour moi et j’en lirai certainement d’autres ! Tout est tellement riche, de l’histoire à la poésie au travail de la langue. J’ai beaucoup apprécié. L’impression d’être devant un génie littéraire, sans toutefois que l’ouvrage soit hermétique.

[Sonja · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the strangest book I have ever read. I saw a review of it somewhere that was very good - but I was just happy to be done with it. It was kind of lesbian lit which is fine, I don't mind that. But there wasn't much of a story. Even so, it seemed like the author entered the story as herself, sometimes as one of the main characters, and then went out again. She does have a way with words but, truthfully, I really didn't always get what she was expounding on. It was written in French and then translated by someone else. I don't think I would read anything else by her.

[Andrés · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept thinking that this was not worth finishing. I thought it a pretensiously "literary" book. I am not sure what it is I don't like about it. I keep thinking that it is because it isn't a story, but I suspect that's not quite the whole problem.