Open Your Heart

Alexie Morin
Translated by Aimee Wall


Awards: Longlist, Dublin Literary Award 2023
Winner, Prix des libraires 2019
Finalist, Prix littéraire des collégiens 2020

A much-celebrated auto-fictional feminist memoir, finally available in English.

In this frank and unforgettable book, celebrated Québécois writer Alexie Morin becomes the subject of her own story as she places a childhood friendship under a microscope. An autobiographical novel set in a small industrial town in Quebec during the 1990s, Open Your Heart recounts the story of a difficult friendship between two girls brought together by illness and operations suffered at a young age. One girl suffers from severe strabismus, while the other was born blue. The first, defiant, feels that something is wrong with her, while the second is an angelic child loved by all. One becomes a writer, and the other dies at eighteen, during an operation that should have saved her life.

In this debut novel, Morin stakes out an exceptional pursuit for truth in these old memories as she grapples with death, love, bonding and solitude.

Esplanade Books
2021

Alexie Morin is the author of a book of poems, Chien de fusil, a novella, Royauté and the novel Ouvrir son coeur, which won the 2019 Prix des libraires du Québec. Born in Québec's Eastern Townships, Morin is an editor for the publishing house Le Quartanier and lives in Montréal.

Aimee Wall is the author of the novel We, Jane and the translator of several Quebec novels from the French, including works by Vickie Gendreau, Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard and Maude Veilleux. Originally from Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland and Labrador, she currently lives in Montréal.

Trade paperback
300 pp 7.5" x 5"
ISBN13: 9781550655780

CDN $19.95

Ebook
ISBN13: 9781550655865

CDN $12.99