DU MERCURE SOUS LA LANGUE(MERCURY UNDER MY TONGUE)

Book ID/图书代码： 07896008B23322

English Summary/英文概要： Mercury Under My Tongue describes the last weeks in the life of Frédéric Langlois, a young boy who, having arrived prematurely at the end of his life, is taking stock of his brief existence. Cursing compassion and complacency, the narrator lashes out at hope, love, the soul, religion – at all the illusions that humans need to ease their tragic condition.
Frédéric Langlois could be that geeky 17-year-old found in every high school — the one who closely clutches his poem-filled notebook, who feels a bit too deeply, who’s just a little too old for his years. But Frederick isn’t in high school. He’s in a hospital ward with other critically ill adolescents, dying of bone cancer. Mercury Under My Tongue chronicles his short stay there, from his distant but friendly relationship with his therapist through comic moments in the ward and his emergent friendships with other teenage patients. Some survive, others are lost, and at the end, Frederick must make a final reckoning with himself and his family, one that is at once dispassionate and deeply felt. Avoiding both misty stoicism and made-for-TV bathos, the book exposes the fallible body as the humanizing factor that grounds spirited adolescent talk, creating a believable, likable protagonist while weaving a compelling, lyrical story.

Chinese Summary/中文概要： 17歲的Frédéric和其他同儕的青少年有著極大的差異，除了自己性格的孤僻\外，最大的不同是他每天生活的地方是在醫院而不是學校，罹患骨癌的他只剩下不到幾個月的時間可活，隨身的筆記是他唯一發聲的出口，不僅記載他對人生的審思，更表露出對親情、友誼、社會等觀感。本書的主角或許不如我們想像的如此勇敢，不過卻詳實傳達了當人面臨不幸時，所必須經歷的人性掙扎。 (VL)

Awards/获奖情况：Rights Sold: Matthes & Seitz (Germany), Soft Skull (USA), ALET EDIZIONI (Italy), 10/18 (France)

The New York Times Sunday Book Review
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Harlin-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

Quecois novelist Trudel convincingly conjures the bitterly sad imagination of a 17-year-old boy dying of hip-bone sarcoma. Lying in a Canadian hospital near the Missiquoi Bay, Frederic has "a kind of dark faith" in himself. Bored and often in terrible pain in his "bachelor pad," he tools around the corridors in his wheelchair with other young patients and has faith in what he knows, which is that he is neither good nor bad, and that his soul will die with him. He fantasizes about his well-meaning but ineffectual psychotherapist, Maryse Bouthillier. With a 15-year-old leukemia patient he meets, Marilou Desjardins, he writes poetry and imagines sharing love, marriage and children. In his heart, Frederic is furious at his bad luck and angry at such visitors as the Abbe Guillemette, who lectures about belief and sin when Frederic cannot see any use for hope or penance, perversely signing his poetry after an 18th-century Italian poet, Metastasio. Frederic refuses to entertain self-pity, and his voice is immediate, winning and utterly believable... —Publishers Weekly

Both dense and full of emotion, but with a invigorating and furious narration, [Mercury Under the Tongue] presents the existential crisis of a young man who is growing up much too fast. —Le Soleil

He possesses an exceptionally rich language, full of striking and original expressions... These pages remind us that Sylvain Trudel is one the most powerful, personal voices of Quebec’s contemporary literature. —L’Actualite

In an intense novel, with its powerful and bitter venom, Sylvain Trudel explores the rebellious conscience of a terminally ill adolescent boy. A brutally lucid text. —Le Matricule des anges

The tone of his speech, sometimes peremptory and phlegmatic, sometimes fragile and pitiable, reveals a young person with a disconcerting wisdom and a disarming comprehension of life and of the world.—Graffiti Journal Culturel

About the Author/作者介绍： Sylvain Trudel is an implacable novelist who sees literature not as distraction but rather as the art of probing our consciousness. His first novel, The Breath of the Harmattan, published in 1986 and rewritten in 2001, won over the critics who recognized in him a kinship with Réjean Ducharme. Since then, Sylvain Trudel has been publishing steadily novels, short stories, and books for children. He has twice been a finalist for the Canadian Governor General’s Literary Award.
加拿大籍的法語作家Sylvain曾出版過多部小說、短篇及童書等作品，1986年出版的第一部長篇小說The Breath of the Harmattan後及受到多項文學獎的讚賞，更多次入圍加拿大國家級總督文學獎的決選名單。

Format:MANUSCRIPT

Rights Status/版权销售情况：Simplified Chinese/简体中文：AVAILABLE

Complex/Traditional Chinese/繁体中文：AVAILABLE

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