The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

Gaétan Soucy is a Montreal-based novelist whose works have invited
comparisons with Samuel Beckett. A finalist for France’s prestigious
Prix Renaudot, The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is the
spellbinding story of two sisters growing up in isolation. One of the
sisters started a fire that killed their mother. The other sister, whom
the parents tried to turn into a son, is impregnated by her brother. She
takes refuge in writing (“what is there to do in this life but write
for nothing?”) and hopes for a better life for herself and her child,
while conceding that “there is no time left for dreams of paradise.”
In the wake of their father’s suicide, the sisters are forced to
confront the outside world.

Sheila Fischman’s translation is as dazzling and gripping as the
original text, which in the view of France’s most renowned newspaper,
Le Monde, qualifies Soucy as “one of the best French-language
novelists to-day.”