The Island of Books
CBC Books | | Posted: March 9, 2017 4:49 PM | Last Updated: October 18, 2019
Dominique Fortier, translated by Rhonda Mullins
A 15th-century portrait painter, grieving the sudden death of his lover, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France. He haunts the halls until a monk assigns him the task of copying a manuscript — though he is illiterate. His work slowly heals him and continues the tradition that had, centuries earlier, grown the monastery's library into a beautiful city of books, all under the shadow of the invention of the printing press. (From Coach House Books)
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From the book
The first time I saw it I was thirteen years-old, that limbo of an age between childhood and adolescence when you already know who you are but don't yet know if that's who you will ever be. It was like love at first sight. I don't remember anything very specific, aside from a certainty, a wonder so deep it was like a stupor: I had found the place I had always been looking for, without realizing it, without even knowing it existed.
Twenty-five years would pass before I would see it again. When the time came to return, I suggested that we not go: we didn't have much time before we had to head back to Paris; they were calling for rain; it would probably be crawling with tourists. In truth, I was afraid, the way you're afraid any time you go back to the places of your childhood, afraid of finding them diminished, which means one of two things: either they appeared larger because your eyes were so small, or along the way you lost the knack for wonder, either of which is a devastating idea. But it hadn't changed, and neither had I.
From The Island of Books by Dominique Fortier ©2015, translated by Rhonda Mullins ©2016. Published by Coach House Books.