Paradoxes and insights, respect and compassion, satire, fantasy, and violence all perfectly blended by an extraordinary power for storytelling. The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange is the story of Pauline and her world, a world in which people turn to violence or sink into quiet despair, a world as damned as that of Baudelaire or Jean Genet. In it we see Pauline and all the members of her family, her schoolmates, teachers, and friends – driven by tempestuous individual imperatives and the social deprivation they encounter – portrayed with a reality that neither poetry nor dreams nor Pauline’s fantasies can weaken.
Durer’s Angel (Les apparences) was Marie-Claire Blais’ intended “third book” to follow the powerful and imaginative Manuscripts of Pauline Archange (This Exile Classics edition includes the second book Vivre! Vivre! and third Durer’s Angel).



