A Vast Expanse

At the end of The Tempest, Prospero drowns his books and buries his staff after orchestrating a storm to bring his enemies together on an island. He renounces his magic. Like Shakespeare’s metafictional farewell to the power of art, the final entry in Marie-Claire Blais’s Soifs cycle, the last book she completed before her death in 2021, confronts the anxieties of a writer at the end of a career.

Together by the Sea conjures a multitude of Blais’s previous characters for a gathering on an island somewhere between the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico to celebrate the eighteenth birthday of Mai. Those unfamiliar with the series will find themselves just as disoriented as long-time readers: the story slips into the stream of consciousness of Mai’s father, Daniel, as he and his nonagenarian uncle, Isaac, stroll along the water, reflecting on the past and the celebration they have planned. Blais takes up the tradition of telling a family history...