Timothy Findley Livres

17 avril 1912 : deux nuits après le naufrage du Titanic, un homme du nom de Pilgrim, auteur d'un livre fameux sur Léonard de Vinci, se pend dans son jardin à Londres. Il est retrouvé le lendemain et l'attestation de son décès est signée par deux médecins. Cinq heures plus tard, son cœur recommence à battre. La mort a refusé Pilgrim. Réfugié dans le mutisme, Pilgrim est interné à la clinique psychiatrique Burghölzli de Zurich où l'un des médecins, Carl Gustav Jung, est immédiatement fasciné par ce cas hors du commun. Pilgrim, qui dit avoir vécu plusieurs vies, côtoyé Léonard de Vinci, sainte Thérèse d'Avila et participé à la construction de la cathédrale de Chartres, est-il un malade mythomane, un rêveur de génie ou la victime d'une étrange malédiction? Un roman ambitieux, fantastique, métaphysique, dans lequel apparaissent Henry James, Oscar Wilde, Monna Lisa... Un roman d'une construction brillante et hardie, à l'écriture jubilatoire.

Une domestique au comportement étrange vit dans l'attente perpétuelle mais vaine de celui qui ne viendra pas ; un jeune scénariste narcissique fait l'expérience de la cruauté morale et de l'inanité des millionnaires pervers qui se déchirent au pays des hypocrites ; une écrivaine, par ses mots, garde à distance ceux qu'elle côtoie, épinglés comme autant d'insectes dans une vitrine, mais c'est un autre type d'aiguille qui trouve le chemin de son bras… L'attente, le vide, la folie, le regard des autres : tels sont quelques-uns des thèmes abordés dans ces sept textes publiés en 1984 par l’un des grands auteurs canadiens du XXe siècle. D’un bout à l’autre, Timothy Findley surprend et hypnotise avec son art de prendre le lecteur à contre-pied. Alexandre Fillon, Livres Hebdo.

Published in 1984, Not Wanted on the Voyage is one of Timothy Findley's most imaginative and compelling literary fictions. Findley turns to one of our essential myths: the biblical story of the great Flood, but he doesn't so much retell it as take our common knowledge of the Old Testament tale and give it an extraordinary twist. Here we have Dr. Noah Noyes, diabolical conjuror and dictatorial leader of his helpless little boat-bound band, sure of his total superiority as man, husband, and father, imposing his view of the ways of God on his wife and family. The kind and generous Mrs. Noyes stands in direct contrast to her hard-hearted husband, and then there are the Noyes children: strongman Japeth, every inch his father's son, with his delicate wife, Emma; and the sensitive Ham, every inch his mother's, with his mysterious wife, Lucy (a.k.a. Lucifer, who, having escaped from Hell, has decided to align himself with mankind). Findley, a great lover of cats, also gives us the crotchety Mottyl, making her way through her ninth and final life. Not Wanted on the Voyage is poetic and passionate and bursting with a wide-eyed inventiveness, at once a stunningly contemporary attempt at mythmaking, a grand novel of the power of the imagination, and a thoroughly good read. --Jeffrey Canton

In the final days of the Second World War, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley scrawls his desperate account on the walls and ceilings of his ice-cold prison high in the Austrian Alps. Officers of the liberating army discover his frozen, disfigured corpse and his astonishing testament -- the sordid truth that he alone possessed. Fascinated but horrified, they learn of a dazzling array of characters caught up in scandal and political corruption. The exiled Duke and Duchess of Windsor, von Ribbentrop, Hitler, Charles Lindbergh, Sir Harry Oakes -- all play sinister parts in an elaborate scheme to secure world domination.

"A distilled and refined novel." --Gail Anderson-Dargatz It is Hollywood 1938. A great star is planning a stunning comeback, while another is bent on self-destruction. And, as dark clouds hang ominously over Europe, hordes of Monarch butterflies swarm beautifully but menacingly over Hollywood. Against a colourful backdrop of butterflies and beaches, Timothy Findley skillfully phases reality into nightmare, exploring mothers' relationships to sons, women's relationships to men, beauty's relationship to evil. Blending biting humour with brilliant perceptions of the levels of despair, "The Butterfly Plague" presents the movie world in all its splendour and decay.

Now an important title in the newly redesigned PerennialCanada series, Timothy Findley’s The Piano Man’s Daughter continues to be one of his most popular books ever. The novel’s reissue follows on the heels of Findley’s newest novel,Pilgrim, released in late 1999 and sure to attract even more new readers to the Findley fold. A glorious reverberation of a time when change was reaching a crescendo and yet hope and renewal were always to be found, The Piano Man’s Daughter is the story of Lily Kilworth and her son Charlie, a young piano tuner, who must find answers to the questions that define his life. Who was his father? And, given the swirl of madness enveloping his mother, does he dare become a father himself? Set at the turn of the century and inspired by the history of Findley’s own mother’s family, this is a remarkable novel that sings with love and loss, a wonderful burst of reading pleasure.

The Edgar Award-winning author of The Telling of Tales returns with a psychological thriller set in a Toronto mental hospital. Lilah Kemp, a sometime spiritualist, inadvertently lets Kurtz, the diabolical character from Conrad's Heart of Darkness out of page 92--and can't get him back in.

Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war—The War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare, of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.

The Body is that of Calder Maddox, who owned half the world and rented the other half. The Sleuth is Nessa Van Horne, whose photos of the beach on the day of the murder may obscure more than they reveal. The Suspects are the many people who spend their summers at the beautiful Aurora Sands Hotel. Could it be Lily, Calder’s diaphanous mistress? Or Nigel, the perfect civil servant? Or the disappearing chauffeur? Or the mysterious doctor who appears from nowhere?

Spadework was Timothy Findley’s final novel before his death in June 2002. An electric word play of infidelity and morality, it is fitting that the novel is set in Stratford, the town where Findley began his career as an actor. Now in a Perennial Canada edition, Spadework will join Findley’s wonderful body of work, a collection to be enjoyed again and again.Known for his gift in plumbing the depths of the human condition, Findley digs deep in Spadework with a cast of characters, each one motivated by addictions and ambitions, each one very alone. Set in the steamy summer of 1998, events such as the Lewinsky scandal, a hostage-taking in Peru and a severed phone line connect—and disconnect—a story singed by lust, power, adultery and ambition. A bestseller in cloth and a smash hit in mass market, Spadework ’s Perennial edition will appeal to Findley’s legion of literary fans.