The Line Painter
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On Sale:
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22/03/2007
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Formats:
Trade paperback | E-Book
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It’s 1:08 a.m. when Carrie’s car breaks down on the highway
somewhere north of Lake Superior. It’s dark, the road is quiet, her cell phone
is down, and she is alone. She took off from Toronto that morning, running from
grief over the death of her boyfriend, and unable to cope with the truth about
the events that led to it. The relief Carrie feels as a truck pulls up soon
turns to fear after its driver offers her a lift. Frank, her would-be rescuer,
is a line painter, putting lines on the road “to stop people from being killed.”
But after Carrie gets in the truck, she starts to realize that this will be the
road trip of her life—a trip of terror, transformation and forgiveness.
Claire Cameron has created a unique portrait of Carrie, a young
woman whose actions are driven by grief and shame, her personality a beguiling
combination of naïveté and streetsmarts. Frank is equally sharply drawn, his
flashes of humour and tenderness disguising the wreckage within. Written in
spare, unvarnished prose that brims with menace against the forbidding backdrop
of a northern landscape, The Line Painter takes us on a riveting trip
down a twisted road of memory and redemption.
“Smoke?”
I looked over. He held up two cigarettes. I had quit. It was all
part of my campaign of the past few years to try and grow up. Quit smoking,
drink less, no drugs, move in with boyfriend and play house, get a real job and
wear a suit. I stopped short of wearing nude-coloured hosiery, but only just. It
was my own sort of a personal temperance plan. If I could just suppress all my
bad urges then . . . um . . . I’d forgotten what, actually.
But Frank wasn’t just asking me to smoke. This was quite a
different thing. Frank was trying to forge a link. He was calling a truce. He
was trying to bond. He was offering me a peace pipe of sorts, though packaged
with a few more chemicals and a filter.
I took a smoke and accepted Frank’s outstretched lighter. I
inhaled deeply. I never have any trouble starting smoking again and I certainly
didn’t this time. . . . I sat down on the shoulder a safe distance away from
him.—from The Line Painter
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Author Extras
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Critical Praise for
The Line Painter
“Suspenseful, evocative and well-paced, this road trip story of guilt and love offers glimpses into tragically human characters who inhabit the margins of redemption.”
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Ibi Kaslik, author of Skinny
“An old B-movie premise—Car Breaks Down in the Middle of Nowhere—is given a fresh, distinctly Canadian twist in this wicked little first novel. The Line Painter fires along on its lean language and propulsive suspense, the kind of story you could swallow whole once you’re past the first page. I certainly did.”
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Andrew Pyper, author of Lost Girls and The Wildfire Season
"A masterful balancing act of suspense and relief.... [Claire Cameron] creates a tension that will have most readers squirming in their seats, eagerly leaping from short chapter to short chapter. It's a bravura performance."
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The Globe and Mail
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