Writer of 'Whore' Nelly Arcan Dead

Celebrated Quebec writer Nelly Arcan was found dead in her Montreal apartment late Thursday evening. She was 35 years old. Arcan's first novel, Putain, enjoyed critical success when it was published in 2001. It was a finalist for both the Prix Médicis and the Prix Femina in France. It was later translated into English under the title Whore. She quickly became a literary star in Quebec and in France.

"She was a mysterious person. She was a real writer, and what I mean by that is she was not talking much about her personal life or the work she was doing. If she was writing a book she was not talking about it to people. If she was writing it, she was keeping it to herself." - Pierre Thibeault

Putain de Nelly Arcan est l'histoire d'une femme escorte à Montréal. Cette femme fait la narration de l'histoire du début à la fin. À la parution du livre, plusieurs se demandaient si c'était une sorte d'autobiographie de l'auteure... je crois que ce roman se veut comme une semi-autobiographie de Mme Arcan et aussi un ouverture sur ce que peut vivre une escorte/prostituée à Montréal. Ce roman a un bon début mais ne semble jamais décoller. À la fin de la lecture, ce n'est qu'une longue narration sans vraiment avoir trop de chair à l'os pour nous accrocher.

A breathless (heavily autobiographical) novelistic account of the life of a young woman who sells her body for a living, Whore is a searing look at the world''s oldest profession and a confessional in the tradition of Sylvia Plath. "Cynthia," as the nameless narrator calls herself professionally, is a French-Canadian Catholic from the sticks who escapes her strict upbringing and stifling parents to move to Montreal as soon as she is old enough. One day she answers the ad of an escort agency and quickly becomes compelled by her strange new calling. Her visitors include an Orthodox Jew cheating on his piety, a boorish Muslim with a deformed arm, a never-ending parade of businessmen and fathers, and a young man whose youth and fitness disturbs her more than any of the rest of them. Cynthia never glamorizes her life-contempt, anger, and resignation ring out from the pages-but her descriptions are engrossing and her prose incisive. Nelly Arcan delivers an unyielding, poetic, and deeply personal account of one whore''s life. - From Her Publisher