Aimee Wall

Six Degrees of Freedom, Nicolas Dickner’s story of the mysterious journey of a rogue “phantom container,” follows characters who have a healthy sense of wonder but are determined to make something of that wonder too, impatient as they are with the pedestrian uses humankind makes of its own inventions. The novel, translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler, doesn’t indulge much in romantic reflection; its characters move too quickly for that. They’re dreamers, but they also do.

Reviews of two novellas that explore lives in poetry: The End, by Anna, by Adam Zachary, and Baloney by Maxime Raymond Bock, tr. Pablo Strauss.

Mend the Living, here translated into English by Jessica Moore, explores the processes, both physical and emotional, that surround a heart transplant.

In the village of Malabourg, girlhood is a difficult, even dangerous time. This fictional town on the Baie des Chaleurs, the setting of Perrine Leblanc’s second novel, is a place out of time, inhabited by generations of lantern-jawed fishermen and run by local gossips. The Lake, translated into English by Lazer Lederhendler, seems at first glance to promise a kind of thriller, but its village setting is the stuff of contes or legends.