Exit

Fiction. Translated from the French by David Scott Hamilton. Governor General's Award, Finalist. Top 10 Books of 2011, Shelf Unbound. The Globe 100: The very best of 2011. Recommended read, 49th Shelf. Book club pick, Shelf Unbound. Somewhere in Montréal, in the not too distant future, an obscure company offers custom-designed suicides for its clients with one condition: their desire to die must be pure and absolute. Antoinette Beauchamp is a successful candidate but her suicide is not. Now a bedridden paraplegic, hooked up to machines that monitor all her bodily functions. she tells her story, taking the reader into the Kafkaesque world of the company and its bewildering cast of characters. EXIT is at once a profound examination of what it is that drives someone to want to end their life, as well as how that urge can be turned on its head against all odds. Written with her signature brio and acerbic wit, Nelly Arcan's last novel is a hymn to life.

A work of originality pushed to the limit. It's crazy. Full of imagination. Even funny at times. A story unlike any other.--Le Devoir

a compelling crawl through the claustro confines of depression and sweeping suicidal desire... Dark, beautiful, poignant and clever, Arcan's EXIT is a powerful read.--The Globe & Mail

Praise for Nelly Arcan:

...Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second- guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion--and honesty--her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work--Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit--so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer.--The Times Literary Supplement