The Imago Stage

(Paperback)

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Growing up with a menacing drunk for a father and a grief-stricken mother, a girl spends her 1980s childhood staring at the television to escape the tension, depression, and looming violence that fill her suburban home. After winning a modelling competition, she dedicates herself to becoming a placid image onto which anything can be projected, a blank slate with a blank stare. Earning enough in Paris to retire in her twenties, she buys a studio in Montreal and retreats from the world and its perceived threats, cultivating her existence as an image through her virtual reality avatar. But when her mother develops cancer and nears the end of her life, she is forced to leave her cocoon - surrounded by her posse of augmented reality superheroes - and interact with the world and her parents without the mask of her perfect, virtual self. Georges offers up an alienated childhood with shifting pop culture obsessions, a woman's awakening to the role of the image in culture, and her eventual isolation in her apartment and the world online. It is a catalogue of the anxieties of an age, from nuclear war to terrorism, climate change to biological warfare. Set in the past and not-too-distant future of Montreal, The Imago Stage is an ominous tale of oppression, suppression, and disembodiment.

Reviews

"A thought-provoking meditation on our relationships with images and digital life."Kirkus Reviews

"The Imago Stageis flat, intensely orchestrated, and nearly lifeless: essentially and purposefully so."World Literature Today

"Here is an intoxicating novel, enigmatic and deeply troubling... a brilliant book, on our relationships to art, to bodies, and to contemporary technology, which assures us that images do indeed hold the power of seduction."Dominique Janelle,Le Vif / L'express

"Karoline Georges doesnt align herself with the vast community of techno-pessimists. Without slipping into utopianism, she sees technologys exponential growth with clarity and curiosity... Virtual reality and artificial intelligence are words that do not scare her... With Karoline Georges, we go beyond obsession, beyond a will to please, or to seduce. We aim instead for pure disembodiment, were virtually in the realm of mysticism."Chantal Guy,La Presse

"A lucid and provocative novel. Karoline Georges brilliantly breaks open our fascination for screens, for emoticon conversations, for beauty without imperfections, for eternal life."Jose Boileau,Journal de Montral

In this singular story dedicated to the mother, the narrator creates an avatar to counter her distress. Karoline Georges succeeds in combining the real and the virtual around the complexity of family ties. The author approaches solitude and the representation of the body with astonishing lucidity. The Imago Stage transcends genres in intelligent and effective prose.Governor General's Literary Award Peer Review Committee

"Karoline Georges suggests that reality can be lived, forming a lasting image instead of the preserved, yet temporary image of the virtual."Full Stop Magazine

"The only thing you have to sacrifice to achieve this blissful utopia is your humanity."Quill & Quire

"This is truly an amazing book that can be enjoyed by anyone."The Girly Book Club

"One of the greatest strengths of Georges novel is that she does not shy away from the narrators persistent discomfort and uneasiness in the resolution, and this is a profound insight to the process of resolving trauma."Winnipeg Free Press

"Canadian writer Georges (Under the Stone) crafts a cerebral novel exploring the thin line between the real world and virtual reality. . . The result makes for an exhilarating and prescient ride through a womans lifelong drive toward disembodiment."Publishers Weekly

"The Imago Stage is an unusual tale of healing and rebirth, in which the protagonist, Anouk, escapes from her traumatic childhood memory by immersing herself in images."Asymtote

Author Bio

After studying film and art history,Karoline Georgesbegan a multidisciplinary artistic approach where video, audio art, photography, literature, and 3D modeling coexisted.She is the author of seven books, includingUnder the Stone(finalist for the 2012 Quebec Booksellers' Prize).In 2012, she received the Artistic Creation Award from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Qubec. Her latest novel,The Imago Stage, has won several honors in French, including the Governor General's Literary Award in 2018. Karoline currently lives in Montreal. After studying film and art history,Karoline Georgesbegan a multidisciplinary artistic approach where video, audio art, photography, literature, and 3D modeling coexisted.She is the author of seven books, includingUnder the Stone(finalist for the 2012 Quebec Booksellers' Prize).In 2012, she received the Artistic Creation Award from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Qubec. Her latest novel,The Imago Stage, has won several honors in French, including the Governor General's Literary Award in 2018. Karoline currently lives in Montreal. Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montral. She received the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Les hritiers de la mine. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Sauciers Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor Generals Literary Award, as were her translations of lise Turcottes Guyana and Herv Fischers The Decline of the Hollywood Empire. Suzanne, her translation of Anas Barbeau-Lavalettes La femme qui fuit, was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, longlisted for CBC Canada Reads in 2018, and shortlisted in 2019. Rhonda currently lives in Montreal. Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montral. She received the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for Twenty-One Cardinals, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Les hritiers de la mine. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Sauciers Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor Generals Literary Award, as were her translations of lise Turcottes Guyana and Herv Fischers The Decline of the Hollywood Empire. Suzanne, her translation of Anas Barbeau-Lavalettes La femme qui fuit, was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award, longlisted for CBC Canada Reads in 2018, and shortlisted in 2019. Rhonda currently lives in Montreal.