Description
Fiction. Translated by Melissa Bull. Searing and lyrical, Marie-Sissi Labrèche's auto-fictional novel, BORDERLINE, describes a young girl's experience growing up in Montreal's working-class neighbourhood of Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. Raised by her "two mothers"—a stern grandmother and a mother struggling with schizophrenia, the story's protagonist, Sissi, is artistic, feral, fragile, insightful, and wild. The novel flicks between the traumas of Sissi's young childhood and early adulthood, spinning a web of connections between her history and the stories she begins to unspool as she studies writing in school. Raw, violent, and at times absurd, Borderline treats all things—the city, class, education, mental health, despair, sexuality, love, and art, with an unflinching, unblinking regard.
Author Bio
Marie-Sissi Labrèche is the author of seven books and her work has also been featured in such publications as Stop, XYZ, Nouvelles fraiches, and in the anthology Folles frues fortes (Éditions T�te premiére, 2019). BORDERLINE, her first novel, was published in 2000 by Éditions Boréal, and has since been translated into German, Russian, Dutch, Greek, and now English (Anvil Press, 2020). Labrèche co- authored the script for the movie Borderline, adapted from her first two novels (Max Films), which won a Genie, four Jutras, and multiple international film prizes. Her other works include La Brèche (Éditions Boréal, 2002), Montréal, la marge au coeur (Éditions Autrement, 2004), La lune dans un HLM (Éditions Boréal, 2006), Psy malgré moi (Éditions de la Courte Échelle, 2009), Amour et autres violences (Éditions Boréal, 2012), and La Vie sur Mars (Éditions Leméac, 2014). She lives in Montreal.
Author City: MONTREAL, QC CAN