"It's a levitating novel set in a timeless city, in the forests of the unreal. A text that perfects the mythology its author has been building, book after book." - Quentin Lafay - Les Matins du samedi, France Culture
"Grim, bloody, carnal, powerful, amoral, fantastic, sulphurous, drawing its strength from the absolute emancipation of the female voice. This sixth novel is all that, and much more. Those who have fallen under the spell of Audrée Wilhelmy's writing will once again be pulsating with her and her narrator, the village writer whose nickname is Peau-de-sang." - Iris Gagnon-Paradis, La Presse
"At the height of her powers, Audrée Wilhelmy brilliantly appropriates a wide range of images, characters and stories from the collective imagination and delivers an original tale that is perfectly in line with her previous novels, while forging a strong link between ancestral Quebec and the Quebec of today." - Manon Dumais, Le Devoir
The village feather shop is the place where desires of all ages and fortunes converge. There, swirling among white geese and blood, lives the featherworker, a wild she-devil, free in body and soul. Her brazen skin ignites beastly urges, thwarting the spells that plague the hunting and mating seasons in the realm of Kangoq. Healing the living with her magic hands, she absorbs the prohibitions they dare not transgress. While the mayor, the doctor, the notary, the tinsmith, the letter carrier and above all Sulfureur pay her in cash or furs for their pleasure, women discover the way to be in tune with their sex.
Rituals are observed, traditions passed on, and pleasure is always exhilarating. Audrée Wilhelmy’s new novel celebrates generations of charmeresses disguised in the fine lace of irrepressible, age-old urges. Peau-de-Sang knows the world and all its secrets, and pulls at the thread of lives as she unravels the language of bodies.
There are several tales in this novel and as many novels in this tale. Where does intuition end, and where does dream begin?
Peau-de-Sang is an ode to the irrepressible vehemence of femininity