Folle (Points)

Isabelle Fortier (whose pseudonym was Nelly Arcan) was a remarkable writer who should be known outside the confines of French Canadian literature. Born in the Quebec countryside, she studied in Montreal, earning a living as a prostitute and describing her experiences in Putain. Folle, her second novel, describes a love affair; with a man she doesn't name but with whom she is besotted. Fear, jealousy, rage and desire all jostle in her writing which is by turn acid, vengeful and sad. Isabelle was a beautiful woman even after the surgeons had done their worst, as the cover of Folle suggests, and it was the fear of age and the decline of that beauty that drove her fear and jealousy. Her writing, which in this novel is essentially a monologue, a letter to the lover, is lapidary; not my words but those of Nancy Huston in the preface to Fortier's last work, Burqa de chair. Putain has been translated into English; I am not sure whether Folle has but, for those that read French, I suggest it is well worth the effort, if only to hear a voice - I have to use the French word - profonde.