news | Wednesday November 1, 2023

"Canoes" Has Arrived!

Get ready to fall in love with a brand new short story collection, because Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal and translated by Jessica Moore has arrived! Seven stories orbit a central novella, creating a collection that resonates with the vibrations and frequencies of women’s voices. In this moving and poetic collection, Maylis de Kerangal casts light on them all, exploring human entwinement and the precarious balance between life and death.

Excerpt from short story “A Light Bird”:

“Sitting on the ground, Lise waited for the message to end, head tipped back, eyes on the ceiling. Hers is the first voice I ever heard, she said, very calm, as though she were speaking these words from the depths of a dream. I knew it before I was even born, I could make it out among thousands of others. I clutched the armrest of the couch, taut, listening. Lise raised a hand to her temple and, eyes on the ground, intoned, it lives inside my ear, that voice, it has never left me, it’s not erased and I’m not afraid of losing it: it’s hers. At that moment, the lights of a car leaving the parking lot of the building across the street cast the room in a very yellow light – the ceiling seemed to grow round like a cupola, more vast, more sonorous, and in this shifting light I saw my child stand, suddenly brought back to grief and all at once find the way in: her recorded voice is in the present moment forever, but it’s a different present, a present in which her death hasn’t happened, a present that will never coincide with mine, with my life, and it makes me crazy…”

The echoes of the voices in Canoes will stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. Pick up your copy here.