The River of Dead Trees

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.

Reviews of the French edition, Le Pendu de Trempes:

‘This book will make readers experience moments of anxiety bordering on insanity.’

– Radio-Canada

‘This is a fascinating book, and the experience of reading it is absolutely entrancing.’

– Le Devoir

AUTHOR

Nathalie Stephens

Nathalie Stephens (Nathanael) writes l’entre-genre in English and French. She is the author of a dozen books including ABSENCE WHERE AS (CLAUDE CAHUN AND THE UNOPENED BOOK) (Nighboat Books, 2009), AT ALBERTA (Book*hug, 2008), THE SORROW AND THE FAST OF IT (Nightboat Books, 2007), TOUCH TO AFFLICTION (Coach House, 2006), PAPER CITY (Coach House, 2003), Je Nathanael (l’Hexagone, 2003) and L’Injure (l’Hexagone, 2004), a finalist for the 2005 Prix Alain-Grandbois and Prix Trillium. JE NATHANAEL exists in English self-translation (Book*hug, 2006). Other work exists in Basque and Slovene with book-length translations in Bulgarian (Paradox Publishing, 2007). In addition to translating herself, Stephens has translated works by Catherine Mavrikakis, Gail Scott, Bhanu Kapil, and Sina Queyras.

AUTHOR

Andree A. Michaud

Since La Femme de Sath, a book acclaimed by critics in Quebec, Andrée A. Michaud has built a distinguished oeuvre. Her fifth novel, Le Ravissement, won a Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 2001 and was nominated for several other prizes, as was Le Pendu de Trempes. Her eighth novel was published to great acclaim in October 2006 by Éditions Québec Amérique.

Awards

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Reader Reviews

Details

Dimensions:

192 Pages
8.75in * 5.5in * 0.6in
0.71lb

Published:

September 20, 2006

Publisher:

Coach House Books

ISBN:

9781552451748

Book Subjects:

FICTION / Literary

Featured In:

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Language:

eng

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