Bitter Rose
Martine Delvaux. Translator David Homel
April 2015
This title is now out of print.
A little girl is growing up in an Ontario village. Her father has taken off, and the world is full of dangers she doesn't understand. Her friends have names like Manon-just-Manon, BB, and Valence Berri, and things seem pretty okay, most of the time, except that girls keep disappearing. When she leaves the village for a suburb of Ottawa and then moves downtown and beyond, she never looks back.
Martine Delvaux was born in Québec City and brought up in a francophone village in Ontario. Her most recent books in French are an essay on photographer Nan Goldin and another on Serial Girls from Barbie to Pussy Riot (forthcoming in translation from Between the Lines). Delvaux studied in the United States and England and now lives in Montreal, where she teaches women’s studies at Université du Québec à Montréal. White Out (translated by Katia Grubisic) was published by LLP in 2018.
David Homel is an award-winning novelist and translator. He has won the Governor General's Award twice for translation. He has also worked as a filmmaker, journalist, and teacher. His most recent book is his memoir, Lunging Into the Underbrush: A Life Lived Backward (LLP, 2021). He lives in Montreal.
