Under the Volcano

In the spring of 1902 on the Caribbean island of Martinique in the town of St. Pierre, a man named Baptiste Cyparis survives a devastating volcanic eruption. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic Ocean in England, at more or less the same moment, mathematician Edward Love proves the existence of the surface seismic waves that cause the Earth to shift during earthquakes. A century later in Montreal, two people meet on top of a mountain rumoured to be a dead volcano and fall in love.

What, if anything, links these three stories? Montreal writer Dominique Fortier raises the question by presenting them as a triptych in her second novel, Wonder (ably translated by Sheila Fischman from the French original, Les larmes de Saint-Laurent). While she declines to answer the question directly, she does provide clues allowing readers to formulate their own hypotheses.

In French-speaking Quebec, Fortier is a rising literary star. Her first novel, On the Proper...