Challenge

The client wanted to avoid use of images of women on the jacket, to prevent readers conflating the author, Nelly Arcan, with the subject of her novel.

Comments

“A powerful argument for suicide as a human right, Exit is also strangely life-affirming. Ordinarily, these contradictory positions could suffice as the motor of a plot. Arcan’s protagonist is the irascible, narcissistic Antoinette Beauchamp, who seeks strength and reason to live from within the depths of her own twisted psychology. Knowing that the young woman who wrote this outrageously beautiful, thoroughly original novel did not is, well, heartbreaking. Cruel, even. So Exit and the late Nelly Arcan’s life are a package. In the end, though, I only thought of Nelly Arcan. How could she have had this book inside her, let it out, and still leave us? Great beauty can be found in very dark places.” — The Rover

Translator David Scott Hamilton was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, and Exit was named to the The Globe 100: The very best of 2011 list.