Mystery and Metatextuality

The narrator of Back Roads is experiencing an existential crisis. So is the novel itself, Andrée A. Michaud’s eleventh. Originally published as Routes secondaires in 2017, it is part mystery, part exploration of its own creation. The writer protagonist’s identity is unclear, as is the question of whether the strange woman she encounters on a forest road is her double, or a ghost, or a figment of her imagination. “I must be called Heather. She must be called Heather.” These lines open the book, words that ring through the rest of the text, though they are occasionally distorted. “My name must be Andrée, Andrée A.,” she says later on, introducing a curious semi-­autobiographical element. This much we know: one woman was in a car accident, and another woman watched it happen. Or was that what actually happened? One of these women is Heather Waverley Thorne, and the other is Andrée A. Or maybe both are Heather, or both are Andrée. In...