To the Forest

(Paperback)

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CBC BOOKS WORKS OF CANADIAN FICTION TO READ IN THE FIRST HALF OF 2023

When the pandemic forces a family to return to the mothers childhood home, she seeks meaning in her ancestral roots and the violent beauty of the natural world.

Fleeing the city at the beginning of the pandemic, two families are thrown together in a century-old country house. Winter seeps through the walls, the wallpaper is peeling, and the mice make their nest in the piano. Without phones and Internet, they turn to the outdoors, where a new language unfolds. Five children become tiny explorers, discovering nature and its treasures, while the adults reconnect with something greater than themselves.

In To the Forest, Anas Barbeau-Lavalette considers existence and death in a celebration of small places and the natural world. A house built on a foundation of gravestones, the local handyman Clark Kent, a mystery woman long dead that no one wants to talk about: Barbeau-Lavalette brings to life the oddities of a place and a cast of colourful neighbours who have lived unusual lives.

Reviews

Anas, with extraordinary delicacy and a flawless sense of observation, offers up words on love, death, great adventures, passing along knowledge and values, finding roots, beauty, and the resilience of nature. Journal de Qubec With rare literary talent, the author tells a story that is tonic and poetic, that grabs readers from the opening lines and doesnt let them go. An absolute jewel of emotion. Stunning! Salut, Bonjour! An autobiographical novel, spellbinding for its poetry, where imagination reigns, Femme fort is like a reverse mirror of La femme qui fuit/Suzanne (Marchand de feuilles, 2015; Coach House Books, 2017), a magnificent portrait of her maternal grandmother, artist Suzanne Meloche. The aftermath of a family history woven from abandonment, she wanted to weave ties with her loved ones, her community, and nature. Le Devoir Through pages and fragments that echo one another, the author tells the story of her clan, moments filled with the ordinary moments and the magic they experienced in their hideaway in the forest. She also brings to life a cast of colourful characters who have lived unusual lives. La Tribune

Author Bio

Born in 1979, and named an Artist for Peace in 2012, Anas Barbeau-Lavalette has directed several award-winning documentary features. She also directed two fiction features: Le Ring (2008) and Inch'allah (2012), which received the Fipresci Prize in Berlin. She is the author of the travelogue Embrasser Yasser Arafat (2011) and the novels Je voudrais qu'on m'efface (Neighbourhood Watch) and the international bestseller Le femme qui fuit (Suzanne), Prix des libraires du Qubec, Prix France-Qubec, Prix de la ville de Montral, and shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award and Canada Reads. Rhonda Mullins is a Montreal-based translator who has translated many books from French into English, including Jocelyne Sauciers And Miles To Go Before I Sleep, Grgoire Courtois The Laws of the Skies, Dominique Fortiers Paper Houses, and Anas Barbeau-Lavalettes Suzanne. She is a seven-time finalist for the Governor Generals Literary Award for Translation, winning the award in 2015 for her translation of Jocelyne Sauciers Twenty-One Cardinals. Novels she has translated were contenders for CBC Canada Reads in 2015 and 2019 and one was a finalist for the 2018 Best Translated Book Award. Mullins was the inaugural literary translator in residence at Concordia University in 2018. She is a mentor to emerging translators in the Banff International Literary Translation Program.