Born in Quebec, Dominique Fortier is a writer and translator. After a doctorate in French literature, she published her first novel in 2008, “Good use of the stars», laureate of the Gens de mer / Astonishing travelers award. In 2016, she received the Governor General’s Literary Award, the highest literary honor in Canada, for her novel “At the peril of the sea(Alto, 2016; Les Escales, 2019), and in September 2020, in France, the Prix Renaudot Essai for “paper towns(Grasset).
“Emily Dickinson could never have been more than a foreign name for us. That of an American woman, known less for her literary talent than for having spent most of her life confined to her home. Since she had still fiercely opposed to having her writings published, few would have known during her lifetime (1830-1886) that Emily was also a formidable poet.Shortly before her death, she asked her sister Lavinia to burn all her personal papers But when the latter discovers in her room hundreds of stunningly beautiful poems, scribbled on pieces of envelopes or wrappings, she is both flabbergasted and unable to obey him. Does she change the lives of the living? Is not following them betraying them? What if words could bring the dead back to life – and those who survive them? Lavinia chooses life. And decides to entrust these poems to two otherwise bereaved women, first his sister-in-law, Susan, wife of his brother, then Mabel, mistress of the latter, so that they would help him to have them published. An ultimate accomplice will lend them a hand: Millicent, filled with Mabel who, thanks to her mischief, will prove to be the fairest reader of the “lady in white”. One by one, we follow them, Lavinia, Susan, Mabel and Millicent, in a narration where the I of the author arises in places, joining her to accompany them.
In this deep and bewitching novel, Dominique Fortier prolongs the life of Emily Dickinson by recounting the great adventure that will lead these anonymous heroines to publish her poems for the first time. A luminous text on mourning, absence, poetry, the power of words and the importance of literature, Les ombres blanches makes us witness the birth of a work that might never have seen the light of day, and the rebirth of three women. We read it as we observe, in the spring, the return of life. Or as one reads the poetry of Emily Dickinson: with happiness and delight.” (Presentation of Grasset editions)