Fiction. Translated from the French by David Scott Hamilton. Shelf Unbound Top 10 Book of 2011. Globe and Mail Top 100 Books of 2011. Somewhere in Montréal, in the not too distant future, an obscure company offers custom-designed suicides for its clients with one condition: their desire to die must be pure and absolute. Antoinette Beauchamp is a successful candidate but her suicide is not. Now a bedridden paraplegic, hooked up to machines that monitor all her bodily functions. she tells her story, taking the reader into the Kafkaesque world of the company and its bewildering cast of characters. EXIT is at once a profound examination of what it is that drives someone to want to end their life, as well as how that urge can be turned on its head against all odds. Written with her signature brio and acerbic wit, Nelly Arcan's last novel is a hymn to life.

Author City: MONTREAL, QC CAN

Nelly Arcan was born in the Eastern Townships of Québec. Her first novel Putain (Éditions Du Seuil, 2003), drawing on her experience working in the sex trade in Montreal, caused a sensation and enjoyed immediate critical and media success. It was a finalist for both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina, two of France's most prestigious literary awards. The two novels that followed, Folle (Seuil, 2004), and À ciel ouvert (Seuil, 2007), established her as a literary star in Québec and France. She is also the author of an illustrated book on the beauty myth for young girls, L'enfant dans le miroir (Marchand de Feuilles, 2007). EXIT (Anvil Press, 2011) was her fourth novel and was completed just days before she committed suicide in 2009 at the age of thirty-six.

Reviews and Other Links
Alex Good @ The Waterloo Record
Marianne Ackerman @ The Rover
Lisa Foad @ The Toronto Globe and Mail
Quentin Mills-Fenn @ Uptown