Baroque at Dawn

"Baroque at Dawn" is a luminous, powerful novel by Nicole Brossard, one of Quebec's most influential writers. Obeying an affinity for the sea, writer Cybil Noland agrees to collaborate with oceanographer Occident DesRives and well-known photographer Irene Mage on a book recording the marvels of an undersea world that may not survive an age obsessed with technology. The three women fly together from Montreal to Buenos Aires and set sail. There, aboard ship, Cybil and the photographer are initiated to deep-sea diving through virtual reality, an exhilarating experience for one, frightening for the other. As the days pass, the various members of the expedition reveal telling traits, and Cybil engages with thought about the writer's inspiration for fictional characters. After the voyage, which comes to an alarming end, Cybil sets to work, haunted by questions and by the characters in a novel she has in progress, particularly the seductive young violinist La Sixtine. Moving gracefully between seascape and places as diverse as Rimouski, Buenos Aires, London, and Montreal, Brossard creates a rich world of uncertainties and paradoxes. The novel is vivid in its beauty as it shape-changes, and as the writer and the writer's creations - the characters - interact in an intricate dance. With the poet's ear and eye that have won her an international following, Brossard juxtaposes the commonplace with the startling, and human leaps of illogic with eternal truths. Is reality what we think it is? "Baroque at Dawn" is written in highly charged, sensuous prose, expertly translated by Patricia Claxton. It confirms Nicole Brossard's reputation as one of contemporary fiction's most intelligent, daring, and original writers.