Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon — Nicole Brossard

Nominated for a Governor General's Award for Translation.

Carla Carlson is at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City trying to finish a novel. Nearby, a woman, preoccupied with sadness and infatuated with her boss, catalogues antiquities at the Museum of Civilization. Every night, the two women meet at the hotel bar and talk â€" about childhood and parents and landscapes, about time and art, about Descartes and Francis Bacon and writing.