Days of Sand

Remarkable images, thoughts, and memories come together, fusing autobiography, sensory fiction, and poetic prose in this beautiful novel by acclaimed Québécoise poet, Hélène Dorion. Memory and imagination are the settings for Days of Sand, where Dorion interweaves place, time, and existence into a present made whole by her deft use of language; this is a novel in which the permanent immediacy of all times and places ¾ of existence itself ¾ is illuminated. Touching on her time in hospital as a child, vacations spent along the St. Lawrence and the coast of Maine, family stories and histories, Dorion takes the reader into her intimately recorded emotions and carefully observed daily existence, in which the quotidian detail is illuminated by the poet's perception, memory, and language. An intimate study of the power of words and language, body and self, Days of Sand is a meditation that resonates with the stories of a life not merely lived, but experienced in a child's growing awareness of the greater world.