As has been frequently pointed out, the problem of individual and national identity is fundamental in Hubert Aquin's [first] three novels—so fundamental, in fact, that it can perhaps be considered their focal point. Aquin likes to present characters who are "abnormal" in some sense. Either they must contend with intense pressure from the outside (the risk of imprisonment and psychoanalysis in Prochain épisode), or they are under the influence of drugs (in Trou de mémoire), or else they have undergone traumatic experiences (the narrator of L'antiphonaire is raped, and then watches from a distance as her seducer is murdered by her husband). The narrators in all of these stories attempt to escape inner disintegration through the act of writing; for them … writing becomes a question of life or death. Mental confusion gives way to, or rather coexists with, acute awareness: by inventing doubles for themselves or...