Description
Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation • Shortlisted for the 2016 Giller Prize • Selected for Indies Introduce Summer/Fall 2016 • Winner of the Prestigious France-Quebec Prize • Nominated for the Quebec Bookseller’s Prize
Catherine Leroux’s The Party Wall shifts between and ties together stories about pairs joined in surprising ways. A woman learns that she may not be the biological mother of her own son despite having given birth to him; a brother and sister unite, as their mother dies, to search for their long-lost father; two young sisters take a detour home, unaware of the tragedy that awaits; and a political couple—when the husband accedes to power in a post-apocalyptic future state—is shaken by the revelation of their own shared, if equally unknown, history.
Lyrical, intelligent, and profound, The Party Wall is luminously human, a surreally unforgettable journey through the barriers that can both separate us and bring us together.
PRAISE FOR CATHERINE LEROUX & THE PARTY WALL
“… superbly crafted … Leroux skillfully reveals the inner worlds of her achingly human characters and the intricate bonds that connect them to each other. Images from this beautiful and moving book will haunt readers.”—Publishers Weekly
“A revelation … an emotionally affecting, intellectually stimulating examination of separation and connection.”—Ian McGillis, Montreal Gazette
“Catherine Leroux writes with a startling grace. Her vision is clear-eyed and true, her heart is as big as sky and bay. The Party Wall’s mothers, orphans, Olympians and prime ministers seem like living, breathing people. And they reveal, beat by beat, that the things that divide us also knit us together.”—Sean Michaels, author of the Giller Prize winning Us Conductors
“Initially, The Party Wall reads like a collection of linked stories; past the halfway mark, however, it reveals itself as something more intricate and cumulative … A surprising, carefully structured novel that for English readers will bring to mind David Mitchell, this feels much more expansive than its page count.”
—Globe and Mail
“… an intoxicating blend of the familiar and the uncanny, brilliantly executed … The Party Wall has the narrative force of a Hollywood film, while also offering richly executed portraits of the characters’ interior lives.”—Montreal Review of Books
“… full of insightful passages, dynamic characters and surprising situations. The Party Wall is a searching investigation of familial ties of biology and biography and the complex ways in which self-discovery affects our relationships.”—The Winnipeg Review
“[T]his book’s sensibility is as unique as the situations Catherine Leroux creates for her characters … The pacing is so subtle, the leaps and links among the storylines so imaginative, it’s unlike anything I’ve read in a long time.”—Martha Sharpe, Flying Books
“Catherine Leroux presents four narratives whose characters, at first glance, are far removed from each other physically, socially, and spiritually. Each is involved in a quest for a parent or a resolution with a family member that will reaffirm and define his or her own identity. When Leroux does establish connections among her characters, she deftly demonstrates the way in which humanity is interdependent and connected, no matter the walls erected to keep people out or in. Leroux’s characters, in such familiar situations, are well-defined and more than worthy of our sympathy.”—Mary Fran Buckley, Eight Cousins (Falmouth, MA)
“With this ambitious novel, both in its theme and in its architecture, Catherine Leroux once again demonstrates her strong and penetrating writing.”—Le Devoir
“Catherine Leroux knows how to make atmospheres in a few lines, a very personal style …”—Salon Littéraire
