Ring (Quincunx, #3)

From the Giller Prize–winning author of Fifteen Dogs, the final installment in the massively ambitious Quincunx by one of Canada’s literary giants

“Love comes from uncertainty! In fact, love is uncertainty’s greatest gift!” This is the message at the heart of Ring, André Alexis’s last installment of the Quincunx, a sequence of five novels that each borrow from a very different genre. Ring is, of course, the romance.

Ring is the story of Gwenhwy far Lloyd, a woman of Welsh and Kenyan heritage who, on falling in love with Tancred Palmieri, is given a ring and three books by her mother, Helen. As it happens, the ring is - or so her mother believes – magical. If Helen is to be believed, it grants Gwen the ability to change three things about her beloved – his psychology, his character, the course of his life – before marrying him. Or if Gwen so chooses, she can change one physical aspect of him – height, bigness of ears, etc. – and one inner aspect.

Ring, provoked by a reading of Harlequin romances, is a mash-up of romance novel conventions and a sunny meditation on the past, on language, on poetry, and yes, on love.