The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle

A brilliant, complex, witty, moving book about writing and writers.

Florence doesn’t like writers—they’re so full of hang-ups—and she likes their books even less, those corpulent things that aren’t even true. She only likes Zeno, but she’ll never admit it, even under pain of death. Zeno is her partner in their small website construction business, Mahone Inc., which has the brilliant idea of putting lesser-known artists and writers back in the limelight.

Zeno, on the other hand, loves writers, especially Pierre Laliberté, the mysterious and mythic novelist who lives like a recluse while awards and trophies tarnish and gather dust waiting for him. Because of Zeno, because of a stolen sentence, Florence finds herself following a trail that could lead her to Pierre Laliberté, this impostor who pillages other people’s lives as inspiration for his novels.

Proulx plays with the mystery genre, to write about literature and those who create it. But above all this is a book whose engaging characters pull us into their lives.