An Appropriate Place: a novel

An Appropriate Place is as much the dramatic story of one woman looking for her place within a disappointing world as it is a provocative commentary on the triumphs and self-deception of the political generation that refashioned Quebec. In the mid-1980s, Gabrielle Perron quits her job as minister of cultural affairs in a PQ government and retreats to the suburbs of Montreal, where she embarks on a personal journey of self-discovery and reconstruction. Her search leads us through the corridors of power in Ottawa and Quebec City, the collapsing sovereignty movement, the burgeoning AIDS crisis, famine-struck Ethiopia, and ultimately to strange and deadly repercussions for herself, her young lover, Pierre, her neighbour Marie, and her great friend, Francois. The final volume in Lise Bissonnette’s False Pretenses trilogy, An Appropriate Place speaks powerfully to the intersections of personal and societal dreams and bravely to the struggle within ourselves to reconcile them all.