BACKSPRING

Judith McCormack's much anticipated debut novel, is a richly described story about chaos and stability, the precariousness of beauty, and the slippery alchemy of time and place.

Eduardo Aguiar Cabral is a brilliant architect and a restless man, an unwilling contestant in his own life. Uprooted from Portugal to Montreal as a child, he believes he can create a building out of anything – a fleeting thought, a scrap of music, a conditional phrase. But his small firm needs money urgently, and he is desperate to get the commission for renovations to a large market – until he is caught in a flash fire that destroys the market and touches off a destabilizing spiral that spreads to his wife, Geneviève, an effervescent scientist, and his closest friend, Patrick.
As Eduardo begins to unravel, Geneviève seeks refuge in her research on exotic fungi, in the strange shapes and glossy colours of indigo milkcaps, bitter oysters, golden jelly, and black earth tongues. But even her fondness for classifying things – she has a hit list of her own orgasms – offers no clues to Eduardo's mysterious disintegration.
When false accusations of arson are levelled at Eduardo, he sinks further into anger and despondency, stranding Geneviève and putting a halt to their efforts to have a baby. In the meantime, Geneviève is aghast to find herself falling for the witty Patrick, who is torn between his tenuous loyalty to Eduardo and his fierce desire for Geneviève. Peril looms when a distracted Eduardo is left in charge of Geneviève's four-year-old nephew, a reckless child who finds hazards in unexpected places.

JUDITH MCCORMACK's 2003 critically acclaimed collection of short stories, The Rule of Last Clear Chance, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was selected by both The Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star as one of the best books of the year. Judith's work has also been published in The Journey Prize Anthology, Coming Attractions, the Harvard Review, Descant and The Fiddlehead. Judith is a lawyer and was awarded the Law Society Medal, the Ontario legal profession's highest honour.