The Milky Way

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.

The Milky Way opens with an arresting image: Anne, an architect, is
sitting on the balcony of her 16th-floor Montreal apartment when the
eyes of a woman who is falling to her death meet her own for one brief
instant. At a conference in Tunis, Anne meets the much older Alessandro,
a Roman archeologist. Back in Montreal, she visualizes his life:
childhood experiences, university years, excavations in Carthage,
marriage to a Tunisian woman who dies of cancer. As her relationship
with Alessandro unfolds, she works, spends time with friends, and
untangles the knots of her parents’ marriage.

The story develops under the luminous creation of Quebec artist
Geneviиve Cadieux—a woman’s lips illuminated by means of a large
light box on the roof of Montreal’s Musée d’art contemporain. The
work is called La Voie Lactée, or the Milky Way. Is love a possible
journey into the galaxies? is the central question posed in this
enchanting and beautifully translated novel.