Abstract

The Way to the Hills is a novella exploring themes of loss, and of being lost. It chronicles five months in the life of Laura, a middle-aged woman who grows obsessed with finding both a reason, and a solution, to her inability to orient herself in space after her mother’s death, and her divorce. As Laura’s physical and psychological disorientation increases, manifesting itself as aimless wandering, insomnia, guilt feelings, and a strong pull towards her youth, she becomes dangerously detached from her immediate surroundings. The novella, set in present-day Montreal with several flashbacks to Northern Italy in the Eighties, eventually answers Laura’s enigma about orientation, but ends opening up the possibility that, maybe, being lost is just part of life.