English Is Not a Magic Language

From award-winning translator Sheila Fischman comes a new novel by bestselling Quebec author and Canada Reads finalist Jacques Poulin, English Is Not a Magic Language. A follow-up to the author's critically acclaimed 2006 novel, Translation Is a Love Affair (Archipelago Books), here we meet reader-for-hire Francis, the little brother of novelist Jack Waterman, whom longtime Poulin fans will remember from previous works as the author's loose alter ego. One call and Francis will arrive at your door in his Mini Cooper, ready to read. He's partial to works about the Natives, the fur trade, and the immense territory the French once held in North America. His principal client is Limoilou, a young woman from Quebec City who still bears the scars she slashed into her wrists at the end of Translation Is a Love Affair, who finds great solace in his reading voice. Altogether, Francis's ordinary life in the shadows of his better-known brother could almost be described as happy. But what is he to make of a missed rendezvous with a mysterious woman? And why have the Mounties suddenly started following him in front of the Plains of Abraham, where New France fell to the British?