Diagrams

A young man leaves a Quebec farm with an envelope of his mother's savings, and in a cathedral in Poitiers, his life splits in two.

Diagrams is the literary novel of Daniel Gervais. At twenty-three, Antoine Venne knows only the farm his father left behind and the quiet rhythms of rural Quebec. He has buried every restless impulse beneath duty and soil. When his mother presses an envelope of savings into his hands and tells him to go see something that matters, he boards a plane to France carrying nothing but the uneasy suspicion that he wants too much.

A cathedral in Poitiers splits his life in two. What follows is an awakening Antoine cannot undo: art, desire, and a magnetic French woman named Alexandra who teaches him that wanting does not require apology. But when grief arrives without warning, Antoine mistakes velocity for healing. The choices he makes in its shadow will cost him nearly everything: his marriage, his reputation, his work, and very nearly his life.

Structured as five musical movements and weaving together painting, cinema, and a four-note melody passed down through generations of mothers, Diagrams traces one man's descent and slow reconstruction. At its heart lies a simple image: a Venn diagram. Between its circles lies the distance, and the difficult, human work required to close it.