A striking debut novel about the power of a father’s love for his son and the heart-wrenching choices he has to make in the face of death.
 
Yanis’s world is Pierre, the son he raised as a single parent. For nearly twenty years, Yanis spent his nights as a cabdriver with Pierre always at his side, so as not to miss a moment in each other’s company. Yanis and Pierre also share a love of diving—in pursuit of that magical moment when they lose themselves in the deep sea. When enveloped by the natural world, father and son relish an escape from life’s pressures.
 
But for some time, Pierre has been tired. Too tired. Despite how attentively Yanis watched him, Yanis missed the early signs of illness. Faced with the harsh reality of his son’s numbered days, Yanis struggles to invent a life his son won’t have the time to live. “It is refreshing to encounter another view [of single parenthood], one in which fierce attachments and idiosyncratic love outweigh any grief or hardship. Dumont’s debut novel strives to uphold this view.” —New York Times Book Review

“[This] rich, somber debut plumbs a father-son relationship to meditate on the fictions people create to endure loss…Dumont offers powerful philosophical insight into questions of what people owe one another and the value of subjective belief.” —Publishers Weekly

“Dumont deftly describes a quiet intimacy...A book that, even despite us, opens the heart...Dumont knows how to guide his reader right to the end.” —ActuaLitté

“A first novel of remarkable skill and emotion.” —Page des libraires

“A marvelous, perceptive, and poignant book...Beautifully written.” —Lecturama