A woman must emerge from the virtual world she's created to confront her flesh-and-blood past and family. In this ominous, numbed-out tale, our heroine spends her 1980s childhood staring at the television to escape the terrors of her suburban home. After winning a modeling competition — she has the blankest stare she moves to Paris and dedicates herself to becoming a placid image onto which anything can be projected. Earning enough as a model to retire in her twenties, she retreats from the world, cultivating her existence through her virtual-reality avatar. But then her mother gets sick and she is forced to leave her cocoon without the mask of her perfect, digital self. (From Coach House Books)

Karoline Georges is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Quebec. Her novel De synthèse won the 2018 Governor General's Award for French-language fiction. Her work encompasses visual art, poetry and children's fiction.

Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montreal. Her translation of Suzanne by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette was defended by Yanic Truesdale on Canada Reads 2019. She won the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English translation for Jocelyne Saucier's Twenty-One Cardinals. And the Birds Rained Down — her translation of Saucier's Il pleuvait des oiseaux — was defended on Canada Reads 2015 by Martha Wainwright and was shortlisted for a Governor General's Literary Award.