Monique Escapes: A Novel

When Édouard’s mother reveals she is—not for the first time—enduring an abusive relationship, mother and son plot her next steps in what is at once an edge-of-the-seat escape narrative and a meditation on freedom and renewal.

Late one night, Édouard receives a telephone call from his mother. In tears, she tells him that her partner, her first since her abusive marriage with Édouard’s father, has been insulting, degrading, and humiliating her. I thought this would be a new life for me and now...