Une obscure compagnie organise le suicide de ses clients. Une seule condition leur est imposée : que leur désir de mourir soit incurable. Pur, absolu. Antoinette a été une candidate de Paradis, Clef en main. Elle n'en est pas morte. Désormais paraplégique, elle est branchée à une machine qui lui pompe ses substances organiques. Et Antoinette nous raconte sa vie. Elle raconte sa mère, dont elle pourrait être la copie conforme. Elle raconte Paradis, Clef en main et son processus de sélection, ses tests et ses épreuves, son chauffeur et son psychiatre halluciné, le caniche blanc qui ponctue les scènes rocambolesques, son comité de sélection. Un monde Kafkaïen. Elle nous raconte aussi son oncle Léon, dont le suicide, également organisé par Paradis, Clef en main, a fait les manchettes du monde entier. Et surtout, elle nous raconte son nouveau désir d'exister, son second souffle. Paradis, Clef en main est le cinquième livre de Nelly Arcan, qui s'aventure ici, et avec brio, dans la fiction. Roman d'anticipation, roman sur le désir de vivre, sur celui de mourir. Roman sur la responsabilité, sur le rapport à l'Autre, sur le rapport au corps, à la vie. Roman fabuleux écrit d'une plume acérée.

En 2001 paraissait Putain, longue psalmodie rageuse dans laquelle une jeune inconnue, moins romancière que poète, se battait à poings nus contre certaines de nos malédictions : la dictature planétaire de l'image, " la plus vieille histoire des femmes, celle de l'examen de leur corps ". Putain n'était ni un témoignage ni une fiction, c'était une danse de guerre – et une étourdissante prouesse littéraire. Cependant, jetée devant les caméras, l'auteure s'y révélait aussi embarrassée que ses personnages. Malaise et malentendu : une guerrière, oui, mais dépourvue d'armure. Le 24 septembre 2009, quelques heures avant un passage à la télévision, Nelly Arcan se donnait la mort dans son appartement de Montréal. À dix ans de distance, il était indispensable de rééditer ce livre " scandaleusement intime ". Une des voix les plus singulières et les plus radicales d'outre-Atlantique. Nelly Arcan, de son vrai nom Isabelle Fortier, est née au Québec, à la lisière des États-Unis. Le passage de la province à la grande ville, vers 18 ans, est vécu par elle comme un traumatisme. Tout en s'inscrivant à l'université, elle devient escort-girl. Elle publiera trois livres en huit ans, avant son suicide : Putain (2001), Folle (2004) et À ciel ouvert (2007), auxquels s'ajoutera un volume de textes posthumes, Burqa de chair (2010).

Rose Dubois and Julie O'Brien find themselves on the roof of a Montreal apartment building on a scorching summer's day, and from that moment on their fates are intertwined. Worldwide climate change and dramatic shifts in weather patterns foreshadow their predestined suffering. As is soon revealed, the two women share a submissive love for the same man, Charles. Their mutual desire creates an arms race of artificial beauty and debasement; they have a common obsession for plastic surgery and strive to be avatars of the perfect female. As they compete for the love and attention of Charles, both women come to realize that to accept being nothing more than an object, to kneel and grovel before your persecutor, you ultimately become his executioner. In the end, Charles' own obsessions and desires-which he loathes-are ultimately his undoing and downfall. Praise for Breakneck: "... With the publication of Breakneck this month (A Ciel ouvert, 2007), the small Canadian publisher Anvil Press concludes its project of publishing all of Arcan's novels in translation. ...Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion-and honesty-her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work-Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit-so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer." (The Times Literary Supplement) "Breakneck is above all else an anxious novel, swimming in an excess of intoxicants and physical extremes, bouncing back and forth between personal improvement and destruction. It is 'troubling and filled with pleasure'-a phrase one of the women uses to describe her developing romance with Charles. Arcan's frenetic, even disturbing prose- here in translation by Jacob Homel-mimics the book's title, strong-arming its reader into an intense philosophical examination of vanity and excess. What risks coming across as a shallow narrative benefits from the incredibly thoughtful introspection that has come to define Arcan's unique world. The late Quebec writer readily understood the all-consuming depths of what we often wrongly deem as superficial." (Quill & Quire) "Breakneck, Nelly Arcan's newly translated third novel (originally published in 2007 in French as À ciel ouvert), secures the late author's singular place in Canadian letters as a writer who punctures the platitudes of sex. Composed in Arcan's trademark fiery style, Breakneck sets up a struggle between Rose and Julie, two successful, artistic women who want the same man. Breakneck is an unflinching, often outlandish look at female extremity in the matters of the heart, exposing how female rivals often share the same flaws. This is sisterhood, in Arcan's formation, 'at the bottom of the barrel.'" (The National Post) One of 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated Fiction Titles, 2015

Rose Dubois and Julie O'Brien find themselves on the roof of a Montreal apartment building on a scorching summer's day, and from that moment on their fates are intertwined. Worldwide climate change and dramatic shifts in weather patterns foreshadow their predestined suffering. As is soon revealed, the two women share a submissive love for the same man, Charles. Their mutual desire creates an arms race of artificial beauty and debasement; they have a common obsession for plastic surgery and strive to be avatars of the perfect female. As they compete for the love and attention of Charles, both women come to realize that to accept being nothing more than an object, to kneel and grovel before your persecutor, you ultimately become his executioner. In the end, Charles' own obsessions and desires-which he loathes-are ultimately his undoing and downfall. Praise for Breakneck: "... With the publication of Breakneck this month (A Ciel ouvert, 2007), the small Canadian publisher Anvil Press concludes its project of publishing all of Arcan's novels in translation. ...Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion-and honesty-her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work-Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit-so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer." (The Times Literary Supplement) "Breakneck is above all else an anxious novel, swimming in an excess of intoxicants and physical extremes, bouncing back and forth between personal improvement and destruction. It is 'troubling and filled with pleasure'-a phrase one of the women uses to describe her developing romance with Charles. Arcan's frenetic, even disturbing prose- here in translation by Jacob Homel-mimics the book's title, strong-arming its reader into an intense philosophical examination of vanity and excess. What risks coming across as a shallow narrative benefits from the incredibly thoughtful introspection that has come to define Arcan's unique world. The late Quebec writer readily understood the all-consuming depths of what we often wrongly deem as superficial." (Quill & Quire) "Breakneck, Nelly Arcan's newly translated third novel (originally published in 2007 in French as À ciel ouvert), secures the late author's singular place in Canadian letters as a writer who punctures the platitudes of sex. Composed in Arcan's trademark fiery style, Breakneck sets up a struggle between Rose and Julie, two successful, artistic women who want the same man. Breakneck is an unflinching, often outlandish look at female extremity in the matters of the heart, exposing how female rivals often share the same flaws. This is sisterhood, in Arcan's formation, 'at the bottom of the barrel.'" (The National Post) One of 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated Fiction Titles, 2015

ReLit Long Shortlist, 2015 Winner, Type Books Award In this daring act of self-examination and confession, the late novelist Nelly Arcan explores the tortured end of a love affair. All the wrong signals were there from the start, but still, she could not help falling. More than a portrait of an affair gone wrong, Hysteric is a chronicle of life among the twenty- and thirty-somethings, a life structured by text messages, missed cell phone calls, the latest DJs and Internet porn. When the writer's aunt read her tarot cards, no predictions for her future ever appeared. This tale, an astounding feat of literary realism, shares the story of a woman who loses her identity in a man in hopes of finding love. Told in the same voice that made her first novel Whore an international success, Nelly Arcan manages to answer the challenges she set down for herself in her previous books. Praise for Hysteric: "She writes from a place that is both deeply embodied and highly intellectual-if someone's womb really did end up on their brain, and that person then wrote a book, it might read something like Hysteric. English readers are lucky to have access to more of Arcan's brains and guts, and this translation is hopefully a herald of growing appreciation for a uniquely talented and brutally brave writer." (Montreal Review of Books) "Hysteric is a raw stroke of wild love that explores desire and memory, fear and love, a novel that leaves the lights on for its readers, hurts as much as it haunts, and brings a much-needed philosophy to the genre of urban literary fiction." (The Georgia Straight) One of the Telegraph Journal's Most Anticipated Books of 2014 Praise for Nelly Arcan: "... With the publication of Breakneck this month (A Ciel ouvert, 2007), the small Canadian publisher Anvil Press concludes its project of publishing all of Arcan's novels in translation. ... Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion-and honesty-her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work-Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit-so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer." (The Times Literary Supplement)

Découvrez Peggy, une nouvelle fulgurante de Nelly Arcan où l’amitié entre deux adolescentes devient le miroir de nos propres tourments.

Sur le toit d'un immeuble de Montréal, une femme au teint de rousse se fait bronzer. Immobile sous les rayons, Julie O'Brien ne supporte pas la morsure du soleil : mais elle considère le traitement qu'elle s'inflige comme obligatoire. La beauté, chez Nelly Arcan, est en rapport avec la maltraitance. La beauté est une guerre. Et la guerre surgit lorsque Rose Dubois la rejoint sur ce toit brûlant. Rose est en couple avec Charles Nadeau, un photographe de mode. Les deux femmes se lient, mais ne peuvent s'empêcher de projeter dans leur relation l'ombre de leurs peurs. Chacune peut repérer les traces de la chirurgie sur les lèvres ou les seins de l'autre. Un lien au scalpel. Et pendant que Charles manipule des photos sur son ordinateur, Julie et Rose se demandent laquelle est en trop, qui devra mourir. Dans un monde de harcèlement publicitaire où le corps des femmes est sans cesse déshabillé et exposé, brandi comme une marche à suivre et refondu par la chirurgie esthétique, l'amour semble glisser des doigts. C'est une histoire d'aujourd'hui, cruelle. C'est aussi une prouesse littéraire sans pareille. Un pur condensé de désenchantement et de colère. Nelly Arcan est québécoise. Ses deux premiers romans, Putain (2001) et Folle (2004), se sont distingués des deux côtés de l'Atlantique.

"Ensuite j'ai eu peur de tout, j'ai eu peur qu'il soit comme toi, qu'en naissant le bébé ait déjà un passé rempli d'autres femmes. Il me semblait que l'enfant te ressemblait déjà et que même coincé entre les parois de mon ventre il avait déjà ton indépendance, qu'à la limite il se fabriquerait tout seul avec cette force d'affirmation venue de tes ancêtres, qu'il m'imposerait son rythme en me martelant le ventre pour que je lui envoie mes repas et qu'à la sortie il se désintéresserait aussitôt de moi. Il me semblait qu'en venant de toi cet enfant me quitterait." Devenant son propre personnage, Nelly Arcan écrit une lettre à l'homme qui l'a quittée. Histoire de conquête et d'abandon, de désir et d'humiliation entre une jeune femme québécoise et son amant français. Elle s'y révèle amoureuse folle, folle de jalousie, folle de son corps haï, folle de la dictature planétaire de l'image. Ici, Nelly Arcan fait jeu égal avec Putain, son premier récit, en nous faisant entendre la beauté d'un désespoir si absolu.