Hebert, Anne in The Books Store

Anne Hébert's final novel, originally published in French as Un Habit de lumière, is a story of dangerous dreams come true.

Rose-Alba Almevida, her husband Pedro, and her son Miguel live by modest means in a Paris apartment, but each, in their way, dreams of returning home to Spain to reclaim the honor and identity stripped of them by the immigrant struggle. Yet, where Pedro plans and saves for a vineyard plot to which he can retire, Rose-Alba and Miguel have vastly different dreams. For them Spain is an emotional state, where impulse and instinct prevail, where passions are untempered by foreign, unfamiliar values. When a mysterious stranger enters their lives and offers all that Rose-Alba and Miguel seek, the Almevida family is torn violently apart and their innocent dreams become the barbed weapons of their own destruction.

As Julien seeks liberation in Paris, he is haunted by the memories of a fateful autumn on the banks of the Duchesnay River near Quebec City. Until then, his reclusive childhood had been centered on his protective mother, Pauline, and his sister, Hélène. A wild and beautiful young woman captivates both Julien and Hélène. She promises them freedom, but her reckless urgings turn ecstasy and seduction into bitter tragedy.

This is the story of Édouard, StÉphane, and the spirited girl they find alone and apparently lost in Paris. When the two men offer the young Quebec girl shelter for the night, their lives are profoundly and irrevocably changed. StÉphane falls quickly for Delphine, but Édouard, a man without expectations who hides from the world in a life of mediocrity and whose only desire is to live and die quietly, is slower to accept her. He is disturbed by Delphine's abrupt arrival in his life, her strange accent, her excessive passion. Then, just as he opens himself to her exuberance and vulnerability, he is torn violently from her and left to unravel the mysteries of her sudden presence and absence. Anne HÉbert's fifth novel in translation (originally published under the title Est-ce que je te dÉrange?) springs from a place between dream and reality, and offers a disturbing look into the workings of fascination and obsession. Tortured love, broken childhoods, and the forces of nature and death are woven into this extraordinary, poetic tale from one of Canada's most important writers.