Angélique Lalonde
In conversation with Diana Davidson
Saturday, October 24 | 7 PM
Forsyth Hall, Downtown Library | $10
Variations on a Dream:
Variations on a Dream follows Sarah and Trevor, a married couple struggling with burnout, creative dissatisfaction, and fading intimacy, who become obsessed with an enigmatic film inspired by the myth of Ariadne. As fantasy and reality begin to blur, their relationship is tested by desire, betrayal, and the arrival of a captivating new student who threatens to upend their world.
"Variations on a Dream is shifting, kaleidoscopic, and prismatic—nothing is as it seems, emotions are characters, and identity is porous. At its core, this gorgeous novel is about a marriage falling apart, a seemingly mundane topic, but Angélique Lalonde treats it with rarely seen creativity and care, revealing in the process that even the most intimate of fractures deserves the most extravagant of literary finesse. This book will stay with me forever."
—Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Hunger We Pass Down (Featured at STARFest 2025)
About Angélique Lalonde
Angélique Lalonde’s work has been featured in PRISM International, The Journey Prize Stories, Room, and The Malahat Review, among other publications. She received the 2019 Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She lives on Gitxsan Territory in Northern B.C. Her short story collection Glorious Frazzled Beings was shortlisted for the Giller Prize.
Variations on a Dream
From the Giller-shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings comes a beguiling debut novel humming with sensuality, intelligence, and a tinge of the absurd.
After years of shouldering the childcare and housework, trying to keep her creative life and career alive, and managing her husband’s existential anxieties, the once whimsical Sarah is too burned out to dream. Most days, all she can muster is an imaginary, picture-perfect version of her husband Trevor. Meanwhile, Trevor is caught in a downward spiral of his own: strangled by fear of artistic mediocrity, and lonely and disconnected from his family, he fantasizes about the early college days when his romance with Sarah still thrilled with expansive, seductive possibility.
When both Sarah and Trevor secretly stumble on an auteur porn film based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne, they are immediately sucked into a dizzying maze of obsession, betrayal, possession, and duplicate selves echoing backwards in time. As the lines between fantasy, reality, and dream become increasingly blurred, a brilliant, alluring new student arrives in Trevor's university class—threatening to collapse the walls of their mythology forever.
With startling psychological insight, a sly sense of humour, and all the peculiar twists of a fairytale, Variations on a Dream is a fearless exploration of how far we will go to save what we once believed to be a dream come true.
Diana Davidson lives and writes in Edmonton, Alberta. Her novel Liberations is forthcoming with NeWest Press: it is a story about war, love, and ghosts. Her first novel Pilgrimage was a finalist for the 2014 “Alberta Readers’ Choice Award.” Her story “The Blacksmith’s Wife” was a finalist for the Canadian Authors Association 2026 Fiction Prize and “Marilyn and the Bears” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Davidson holds a PhD in literature from the University of York, England and has worked as the Director of Public Library Services for the Government of Alberta for sixteen years.
