{"product_id":"9780887842788","title":"Sandra Beck","description":"\u003cp\u003eNo writer in Canada today is more in love with the English, and French, languages than John Lavery. That love is gloriously requited. In inventive, incantatory prose, \u003cem\u003eSandra Beck\u003c\/em\u003e, his long-awaited first novel, paints a very unusual portrait of a lady. This is a book about many things: the struggling antics of adolescence, the banal delusions of solitude, the city of Montreal. But it is, above all, a deeply moving tribute to a woman who is both present and absent on every page.\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003eWho is Sandra Beck? She is a mother, a wife, a musician, a manager; but, too, she is the ghost in the seat behind us, always just outside the edges of easy description. Her story is told in the voices of others - namely, her daughter, the wordstruck and lovestruck Josee and her husband, the police chief and TV personality P. F. Bastarache. In a book that embraces paradox and defies the expected limits of what a novel can do, language is at once a gleeful celebration and a crutch, a trick. Despite their keen investigative powers, the \"testimony\" of Josee and her father is often untrustworthy, even contradictory: self-interest hobbles their understanding. Sandra herself becomes a crutch for them both - a crutch they must learn to live without.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"House of Anansi Press Inc","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47131851423984,"sku":"9780887842788","price":10.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780887842788_p0.jpg?v=1763852340","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780887842788","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}