White Resin by Audrée Wilhelmy, trans. by Susan Ouriou

“I was born,” our narrator tells us, and White Resin opens with the very moment Daā enters the world, a child of the convent of Sainte-Sainte-Anne, an unusual order of nuns at the edge of the taiga in northern Québec. This was enough to tell me that White Resin was going to be a strange lyrical journey, and while I raced through it because I could not get enough of this poetic story, I also felt the depth of the decades the novel covers and the complexity of the relationships within. Audrée Wilhelmy’s work here is masterfully translated by Susan Ouriou, and the effect in this English translation is stunning.

“White Resin is an enchanting, heartbreaking novel.”

While Daā was raised in the convent – or more accurately, raised herself in the taiga, developing her deepest and closest relationship with the land she called home – Laure grows up a short distance away, in the town which serves the Kohle Company mine, an albino boy born to two miners; his mother giving birth and dying in the mine itself. Laure’s albinism marks him as different, but his whiteness is not the thing that marks him out: his father, determined to give Laure a better life, decides Laure will be a surgeon. On a trip to the convent shortly before he’s to head to the Cité for his training as a medical officer, Laure meets Daā, age 5 and defiant. And so begins their odd romance, which doesn’t feel like quite the right word: their story is dreamy and mist-like, love created from a strong carnal connection and a compromise between nature and what we take as conventional, Western society.

The narrative is split into two parts: one being the first-person storytelling of Daā, and the poetry of her words, celebrating the taiga and the forest which has always protected her, defended her, fed her, and cared for her. The second is a third-person narrative, focused on Laure, following his journey as a doctor, finding Daā, and the two of them settling into a partnership. This second narrative is more conventional, adhering to standard Western framings of storytelling, while Daā’s narrative plays with space and words, using the pages and speaking to nature.

White Resin is an enchanting, heartbreaking novel. The central tension of industrial, Western capitalism trying to coexist with nature is outwardly a quiet, non-conflict, but ultimately ends in collapse. This is a remarkably beautiful novel, exploring the dilemma society at large is grappling with: how can we preserve and honour nature while we continue to create an industrial, polluting world? Wilhelmy doesn’t offer us any answers, but she does prod at our attempts to force some kind of co-existence, a middle place between the two that we want to work. Daā and Laure are able to spend years in comfortable peace, but the novel warns us, quietly, repeatedly, that this cannot last.

AUDRÉE WILHELMY was born in 1985 in Cap-Rouge, Quebec, and now lives in Montreal. She is the winner of France’s Sade Award, has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was shortlisted for the Prix France-Québec and the Quebec Booksellers Award.

SUSAN OURIOU is considered to be one of Quebec’s finest translators of literary fiction. Her most recent translations include Audrée Wilhelmy’s The Body of the Beasts and, with Christelle Morelli, Fanny Britt’s acclaimed novel Hunting Houses.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arachnide Editions (Sept. 7 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1487008864
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1487008864

Alison Manley

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Alison Manley has ricocheted between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia for most of her life. Now in Halifax, Nova Scotia, she is the Cataloguing and Metadata Librarian at Saint Mary's University. Her past life includes a long stint as a hospital librarian on the banks of the mighty Miramichi River. She has an honours BA in political science and English from St. Francis Xavier University, and a Master of Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University. While she's adamant that her love of reading has nothing to do with her work, her ability to consume large amounts of information very quickly sure is helpful. She is often identified by her very red lipstick, and lives with her partner Brett and cat, Toasted Marshmallow.

Alison Manley

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