A boarding school deep in the forest carries the echoes of its past inhabitants. Hints of a disturbing history and the unfolding events of the present are refracted by the multiple voices of the girls who now live within its walls, their suggestive and enigmatic accounts interweaving in a rich and unsettling chorus.
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A spooky feminist novella
Written by Ariane Lessard
Translated by Frances Pope
152 pages • 978-1-77186-291-2 • 8″ x 5″
FICTION / Literary FICTION
$14.95
AVAILABLE IN ALL FORMATS
Publication Date: October 1, 2022
“The young girls, and the older girls too, who are better, study at the boarding school high on the snowy mountain. When spring comes, the ground will take some time to shed its thick white carpet. The shade of the conifers that surround the school will keep the air cool, and the snow keeps covered up what is freezing, slowly, in the earth. The school stays wrapped in its blanket for nearly six months every year, on account of its northerly position. You might picture it as a dot in the middle of the forest, accessible via a gravel path along which horses and carts can travel in the summer.”
PRAISE FOR SCHOOL FOR GIRLS
“A joy to read … well worth seeking out.” (Tony Malone, Tony’s Reading List)
“Lessard builds the atmosphere of a girls’ school unconventionally but convincingly as rivalries persist, friendships falter, and consequences deepen . . . a pleasingly macabre combination of Lauren Goff’s Matrix and The Shining (either King or Kubrick).” (Andrew Murray, subTerrain magazine)
“It is powerful, challenging, and still somewhat mysterious after two readings. I think Lessard intended it that way.” (Katherine Ashenburg, Literary Review of Canada)
“A little gem of a book … haunting.” (Consumed by Ink)
“A choral piece with gothic undertones. With an impressive multiplicity of forms, this book tackles a wide variety of themes, underpinned by a strong feminist voice.” (Benoît Vanbeselaere, Les Libraires magazine)
“A whole troupe of poisonous young girls, neither demonized nor deified, appearing in all the fragile ferocity of adolescence.” (Laurence Perron, Lettres québécoises magazine)
“. . . dark, fraught, frightening in places. And one to read in a single sitting.” (Silvia Galipeau, La Presse newspaper)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ariane Lessard was born in 1990 in Lévis, not far from a monastery of cloistered sisters. She published her first novel, Feue, in 2018, which was a finalist for the Rendez-vous du premier roman, a first novel award. She also took part in the first residency of L’Hôtel des autrices in 2020, a feminist digital platform created in Berlin during the pandemic, in which she wrote a novel in one month. School for Girls is her first novel to be translated into English.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Frances Pope is a translator and writer from the UK. She lived in Montreal between 2015 and 2020, where she received her MA in translation studies from Concordia University. Now living in Bristol (UK), she continues to translate in the arts and non-profit sectors, as well as reviewing and writing about electronic music. Frances has two published collections of poetry, Quarters (Ekstasis Editions) and The Brazen Forecast (Cactus Press), both published in 2020.
OUR COMMITMENT TO DOING THINGS DIFFERENTLY
✓ A deliciously off-kilter novella, translated by a first-time literary translator.
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