Arvida

Samuel Archibald

Sep 2015 · Biblioasis International Translation Series Book 15 · Biblioasis

About this ebook

Finalist for the 2015 Giller Prize

Finalist for the 2016 Best Translated Book Award

One of Quill & Quire’s Books of the Year, 2015

A twenty-five-thousand-copy bestseller in Quebec, Arvida, with its stories of innocent young girls and wild beasts, attempted murder and ritual mutilation, haunted houses and road trips heading nowhere, is unforgettable. Like a Proust-obsessed Cormac McCarthy, Samuel Archibald's portrait of his hometown, a model town design by American industrialist Arthur Vining Davis, does for Quebec's North what William Faulkner did for the South, and heralds an important new voice in world literature.

Samuel Archibald teaches contemporary popular culture at the University of Quebec in Montreal, where he lectures on genre fiction, horror movies, and video games, among other subjects.

Ratings and reviews

For me, the key to Arvida didn't appear until the final story in the collection, "Madeleines: Arvida III," when Samuel Archibald, describing his development as a writer, says, "[T]here are always times when I get attached to stories that aren’t stories really, that begin without ending and never get anywhere. Possibilities, dreams, and missed rendezvous. Phantoms and absences. . . . Nothing made writing more difficult for me than this fundamental impossibility. Like the anti-madeleines of my father in which all memory is swallowed up, the stories I like are untellable, or suffer from being told, or self-destruct in the very act of being formulated." I was frustrated by the first six of the 14 stories in Arvida for precisely this reason: they didn't really feel like stories; they didn't go anywhere. I was sure that Arvida was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award ("BTBA") for a reason, though, and once Archibald found his stride, in "A Mirror in the Mirror," he took me to some very dark places indeed. Arvida's unevenness led to its 3-star rating, but I am glad that I read it and grateful to Biblioasis and the BTBA for introducing me to Archibald's voice. I received a free copy of Arvida through Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

About the author

Samuel Archibald's debut collection of short fiction, Arvida (Éditions Le Quartanier, 2011), won Quebec's Prix Des Libraries 2012 and Prix Coup de Coeur Renaud-Bray 2012. He currently teaches contemporary popular culture at the University of Quebec in Montreal, where he lectures on genre fiction, horror movies, and video games, among other subjects.