The Perpetual Ending

By Kristen den Hartog

From a writer acclaimed for her “probing, idiosyncratic intelligence and emotional generosity” (Calgary Herald), comes a deeply imagined novel that takes us into the lives of devoted twin sisters and their world of opposites, doppelgängers and ghosts.

Jane and Eugenie Ingrams are mirror-image twins, and thus exact opposites. Halves of a whole, they are inseparable, each understanding her world through the other. But when Lucy, their artistic mother, moves her daughters from Deep River to Toronto (leaving behind a bewildered husband), she finds she can’t entirely escape the remains of their troubled marriage.

Eugenie thrives in the jumble of urban life, but Jane is sickened by its underside: the mess of lost souls who live on the streets, the garbage, the noise and the violence. When their father eventually seeks them out, Jane is relieved for the chance to go back to Deep River. Eugenie agrees to return for the sake of her beloved sister -- a soon-to-be-tragic concession.

Years later, Jane is a writer in Vancouver, living with her lover, Simon, a gifted illustrator. Although troubled by her past, she finds solace (and commercial success) in the rich, fabulist tales she and Simon create -- which are expertly woven throughout the book -- tales of people born with extraordinary qualities: horns, the gift of prophesy, spiderweb hair or unquenchable thirst.

Wondrous, inventive and brimming with charm, The Perpetual Ending is an exploration of love and artistry that shows the world as a whole, in all its grotesqueness and beauty. And it uncovers the surprising ways we sometimes arrive at the heart of one story through the telling of others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jan 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307368904

Kristen den Hartog

Kristen den Hartog is a decorated novelist and non-fiction writer. Her books have won an Alberta Book Publishing Award and been nominated for both a Trillium Award and the City of Toronto Book Award.